Mesa Verde National Park

Day 3: Cortez, CO to Durango, CO
The early bird gets the worm? -Maybe, but the first few visitors to enter the Visitor's Center at Mesa Verde National Park get their choice of what's left the group tours.  The tours of various Pueblo sites require a ticket to a reserved tour led by a National Park Ranger.  By the time we got to the visitor's center at 8am, we had decided on the least strenuous of all tours -Cliff Palace, the largest and most magnificent mother of all pueblos. 1pm or later tickets were all that was left. Hmmm.  Seemed okay to us, after all, it was only expected to be in the mid-80s.  Coming from 120F, we shrugged our shoulders and handed Ranger Strange-name-from-Oregon-with-a-beautiful-2-foot-pony-tail our cash.  All Set.  We loaded the Jeep, and headed off on various trails and overlooks of Mesa Verde National Park.  Truth be told, Cami was feeling off.  Not that this is uncommon, but it sure doesn't make life easier.  Our first overlook led to many complaints.  The wind.  The steep hill.  The cold breeze.  Her aching knees... oh yes, this was starting soooo welllll.  I got clever and told her that if she stopped talking long enough, she might be able to hear Mother Nature.  That WORKED! She did.  -Then I heard Mother Nature.  I looked 2 feet past my foot to see a grey snake.  It was moving slowly and rustled the grass a little bit which caught my attention. Yikes! I am not a snake person, but...it was small and had a narrow head so I figured that it must not be a Rattle Snake.   Let's Go Folks!!

Our turn finally came to meet another Park Ranger with a long beautiful gray pony tail.  This Ranger led our entire group down a group of stairs, then some limestone stairs on the way to... Kevin will never know, because Cami Freaked OUT!  Yep. No Cliff Palace for Kevin.  The ranger saw those two and said "Ah, oh well, at least you can still turn around, you'd better hydrate her". Who knew tears could be so dehydrating?!  Anyway,  I forged along the trail with Natalie and we had a grand time, took amazing photos, and put forth a good bit of exertion.  I felt kind of bad for Kevin, but then I think of all the times I have sat out of this event (Padre games) or that outing (all Disneyland rides), and I got over it real quick.

On the way out of the National Park we saw a handful of the 500 pueblos from some pretty amazing look outs.

We then headed up to Durango.  I had been there once before, and fell in love with the town and still carry great memories of a short trip in my teens.  We pulled into the KOA and the girls went swimming.  We were wiped out, and settled for a KOA pizza.  I was okay with that, but let Kevin know that if we didn't have the girls with us, we'd head to the Downtown district and have some yummy food and I'd make home bar-hop a little -after all, it is Durango!

As fate would have it, the KOA pizza man was out of dough and we had to go down town to eat!  Like I won the lottery.  We had a great dinner, and walked around with the girls.  So fun!