... Our Quick Trip ...

...To Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado! 

A few stats: 
--750 miles (one way!)
--12 hours of driving, all done in one day
--Chloe was carsick 4 times, (only tossing her cookies 3 times...ew.)
--In one day, temperature ranges from 81˚ at 6:30am to 91˚ at 5pm
--Overall, we saw license plates from all but 9 states

As the miles go by...

Wishing I'd captured more of the side-of-the-house artwork with my camera. There were quite a few pictures painted on the sides of different buildings.

Finally here and enjoying the view! Deer wandered through our campsite in the mornings and evenings. Maybe they are hard to see but just beyond the road on the left side of the picture are some deer grazing. 

The start of adventure! "Oh yeah, I can't wait to go exploring!" ~Chloe  Here the kids are pointing "up" because we are at 8572 feet in elevation.

Already she was saying it was too much exploring...This was only an hour later!

Cliff House Palace. We got to walk around here(with somewhat limited access).

This picture is to show where these Indians who lived in these cliffs actually went to get to their homes. Wishing I could draw a circle around the cliff dwelling in this picture. It is pretty much in the center of the picture, just below the mesa top. Did they climb down from the top? Did they come up from the canyon floor? There were many, many examples of cliff dwellings in this park. Amazing.

I guess this is the view of us that Chloe sees. She wanted to take our picture.

We were hiking a trail called "Knife's Edge". Notice the valley floor just beyond the grass? A long way down!

We found even more reason to take care while hiking this trail! Can you see it? There were two of these rattlers along the trail which caused us to jump!

Ruins at one of the Far View Sites. Gives an idea of what some of the sites looked like. The rooms were very small. Short doorways. Every place had a "kiva" which was like a room for practicing their religion and using for special ceremonies.

After a long day of exploring we got to watch nature in our own "backyard"!

Our "house".

On the way home we drove through torrential down pour rain. We could hardly see the road at times! Thankfully that was somewhat short lived and we were able to get home at about the time we expected to. 

 We had a great time together. I know our tent looks big, but sometimes with our growing family it feels small... We're already thinking about and dreaming about the next camping adventure! Any suggestions?