Colorado treasures

We drove thru the evening to Mesa Verde national Park tucked in the south-west corner of Colorado where we camped. In the morning we had a herd of mule deer around the campsite & saw another coyote strolling down the road. At park HQ we discovered that cyclists were alowed, for the first time & on that day only, to cycle the 9 mile trail on Wetheril mesa which links a number of archeological sites. So thats where we headed joining other cyclists taking advantage of this opportunity.

The park has UNESCO world heritage status & contains a number of cliff dwellings built & occupied by the ancient Puebloan people until approximately 1000 years ago. There are also excavated sites of houses occupied before the cliff dwellings were built, which illustrate the evolution of these people from hunter gatherers to settled farmers. Only 2 of the cliff sites have unrestricted access for the public to view the remains of these small villages comprising modest stone walled rooms constructed in every avaliable space nestled under large cliff overhangs, the access to which is by steep paths & ladders. Rangers at the sites were a wealth of information on the structures & the way of life for the inhabitants.

We had a long look around the Long House site & it surprised me how much of it we were able to walk over. Then we cycled to a couple of other sites under a hot sun. Then we drove over to Chaplin Mesa where an excellent museum was located and where lotte & Otie had to search out heaps of information from the exhibits as part of the junior ranger program in the quest for

another coveted badge. Thousands of artifacts have been recovered from this area because when the the villages were abandoned the inhabitants could only take what they could carry & many things were left behind to be discovered a millenium later. There has been much study on the causes of the decline of this society but the accepted view is that a prolonged drought and depletion of resources (soil, wood & wildlife) caused the collapse of this small spectacular society of approximately 5000 people. We were unable to go onto the Palace house site, the biggest one with more than 200 rooms because a visit there needed a reservation and tickets which did not fit in with our spontaneous way of life. But we had an enjoyable look around the Spruce Tree house, the best preserved site, including a renovated kiva, a round below ground communal worshippy area with a sipapu, a passageway to the underworld, which luckily we couldn't fit into. We had the site and a couple of rangers almost to ourselves & they showed us how to grind corn, pointed out some ancient handprints on the wall, painting remnants on the wall plaster & the imprint of a corn cob (about 3 inches long but with big kernels) in the mud floor.

It was almost sunset and we only just had enough time to drive to an overlook & watch the sun setting over Palace house. It was a memorable visit because this park was so different to the other parks we visited with its ancient human treasures rather than natural ones.

We toodled off up the road with a view to running the Gunnison river below the Black canyon the next day. On the way there we we stopped at a wee family diner at Stoner & had a very enjoyable time in the company of 4 mature Harley Davidson bikers called Tree, Tank, Junior & one other whose name escapes me. We ended up in a camp ground in the middle of nowhere with our biker mates who had a cabin nearby. The next morning we cancelled our river trip because we would have needed to hire a 4 wheel drive vehicle to get to the put in & it was all too hard & expensive. But the local kayak shop contact gave us the complicated set of directions to the mythical M wave rapid, in the area where we decided to head. Our journey took us back thru part of the San Juan mountains where the autumn colours were glowing brilliantly.

We stopped in Telluride, another very pretty Colorado resort town for lunch at an authentic Mexican taco stand frequented by local builders, saw some grafitti, found a great book shop with awesome coffee & an excellent kayak store where we picked up some end of season discounted gear. Its amazing how much stuff you need when there are 5 kayakers in the family.

Back on the road to the town of Montrose and the M wave search in a lightning storm. A further call to the kayak store for clarification of the directions and we finally got to the wave on an irrigation canal in the back of beyond. But what a wave, very high speed with a 2 meter V crest & Max & I surfed hard until the sun went down. Its the best wave in Colorado at this time of the year but its an accidental kayak surfing wave under a bridge on a corner of the irrigation race built about 100 years ago taking water from the Gunnison river thru a 8 km tunnel bored thru solid rock just upstream of the Black Canyon. I've written the the directions down for anyone heading that way. Its a covert operation because the race owners & adjoining rancher do not encourage its use & will not tolerate any problems. The kayak shop guy warned me that I didn't get the directions from him. Be great if the Hawea waves pump like this baby.

We headed north towards Fruita and decided to camp at the Colorado National Monument. It was a long drive into the park under a bright moon up onto the mesa top & around the edge of 2 very big canyons. The next day we did some walking, junior ranger stuff at the visitors center and retraced our path with me & the kids biking down a long windy senic road thru red rock canyons out and down to the Colorado valley floor where we headed off to Fruita to concentrate on some quality mountain biking.