Day 6 - Southwest National Parks Adventure

9/29/2025

National park number two - Mesa Verde. We are at Moorefield campground right in the park, our base for 3 nights as we explore Mesa Verde. Because we arrived late and booked nights under different reservations our first task for the morning was to get checked in and find a site. We discovered that the bathrooms have free WiFi at them and that it is available on the sites near by. (Okay we discovered this because it said something about WiFi at the comfort stations, not from experiencing it at the bathroom). Unfortunately the site we picked doesn’t get the cell, so we might move. The campground is nice and most sites are first come first serve at this time of the year.

After getting situated we relaxed before venturing out to explore the park. We had a tour booked for 12:45 at the Long House site. We had to be there 15 minutes early and it would take 45 minutes to drive the winding, switch back road to get there, so we packed a lunch and headed out. The morning was cool and the weather warmed when the sun came out. The drive into the heart of the park was spectacular.

We found the meeting location and our ranger started the tour with safety instructions and information about the site we were about to see. We walk down a narrow path and climbed a wooden ladder to enter the site. The Long House is one of the largest of the cliff dwellings. It was made up of Kiva rooms and one central large gathering place. The Kivas were entered from the top by a ladder that stuck out a hole in the flat roof. The tour was great and the history of the area fascinating.

After the Long house tour we walked around the Badger house community where they excavated houses that were built up on the plateau. The oldest of the excavated areas was around 500 CE

We returned to the camper for a rest and a short bike ride in the campground. Not great riding, tooo hilly!

For dinner we went into Cortez and ate at the Lounge Lizard restaurant, pizza was so bad we sent it back, chili was good, so Andy ate that and we ended up supplementing dinner with a pizza from Little Caesars.