A glimpse into the Hopi way of life
The journey continues and shows us the history of Colorado's Hopi culture
Our next stop was at Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado. This area was the home to the Hopi people who lived in cliff dwellings. Their homes were made of sandstone bricks held together with mortar. The homes were built in the hollows and caves worn into the high rock bluffs around 1,200 AD.
They left the area about 800 years ago. Our drive from Cortez, Colorado, to the base of the park road was through flat desert. Then we literally travelled four miles up the side of a high mesa. It was a rise of over 650 feet. The winding twisting road provided more breathtaking views at every turn. The higher we went the further we could see, until it seemed we could actually see the curvature of the earth. The snow-capped tops of the western Rockies shone like beacons in the far distance.
After getting settled in the Mesa Verde campground we drove to the Far View visitor centre. At one point we climbed to an overlook point. The sign told us we were at 8,900 feet and we could see approximately 160 miles to the far mountains. Further on we took a guided tour of the Cliff Palace dwelling. To realize that a culture of people lived in the caves, built homes and ceremonial rooms and stored their food in special rooms within the cliff overhangs, is amazing.
The men would climb the cliff face to the top and work the ground and grow crops and hunt. The women would walk
down to the valley floor, a very long way below, to gather berries and get water. These would be hauled up the steep slope to their cliff homes. They had great ingenuity for building catch dams to hold water and to build their dwellings without the aid of the modern tools we have, such as rulers or a plumb bob. The walls and corners are perfectly straight. Today was an amazing insight into how these people lived and survived.
On the way back to the campground a large brown bear walked onto the road right in front of us. Unconcerned, he took his time sniffing at the road, before we were able to drive around him.
