Well, it’s the last full day of vacation and we finished strong with one last National Park. That National Park Pass has paid for itself about 3x over! After breakfast at the hotel, we packed a picnic with the last of our groceries. We have really done well with with our cooler and groceries. We ended up with about 6 pieces of ham and 3 pieces of cheddar cheese left.🤗.

Cooler packed, we headed out for Mesa Verde National Park. BUT before we left Durango, we had to go by the Barefoot Shop for Michael’s souvenir. He decided on the way here that he was getting his souvenir hat in Durango, Colorado. The river rafters were sold out of hats yesterday, but he found the one he wanted last night in a store window. The store was closed then, so here we are now. After getting his new hat, we were off to Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde National Park is a World Heritage site – which I had never heard of until today, but it’s apparently a big deal. Thanks to google, we now know that a World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the United Nations as having a special culture or physical significance. There are 24 World Heritage Sites in the United States, and Mesa Verde was the first in the US.

You can tour Mesa Verde on your own, but there are several locations that you can only access with a park ranger. The tours are only $5 per person, but the key is you have to sign up ahead of time. Thankfully one our rafting guides told us this bit of info yesterday so we were booked for the 1pm tour. We stopped at the Visitor’s center for the bathroom and to pick out our travel tree ornament… when we caught a glimpse of a familiar face… oh my word! The Texas Terrors were at Mesa Verde😳🥴😳🥴 Without us even having to say anything, the boys pulled their hats down, averted their eyes and we all quickly scooted in another direction! I just prayed they weren’t on our tour later 😬

The drive into the park was beautiful! It was so different than all the sand and desert we saw earlier in our vacation.The turns and switchbacks driving through Mesa Verde were crazy!! We finally decided that maybe Otis from Andy Griffin drew the road map they used for constructing the roads! The orange line is the road 😳We made it to Cliff Palace for our tour with plenty of time, so we located the picnic area and enjoyed our lunch. We have thoroughly enjoyed our picnics across the Southwest. 😊❤️

We met our Park Ranger and tour group – Hallelujah! The Texas Terrors were NOT in our group! Whew! Ranger Ruth was great, and she LOVED her job! So we begin our hike to see the cliff palace. From what they told us back at the Aztec Ruins, and our friend the Rayfield’s, the cliff dwellings were supposed to be amazing. So, the hike began with a descent down some stairs that were varying shapes and sizes. (I got tickled thinking of a picture I have of Daddy measuring the steps at the Mayan Ruins in Cancun with his tape measure “Peggy, these steps aren’t built to code.” 🤣🤣🤣) so I had to get a picture

As we came around the corner, we see what all the fuss is about…There is an entire city built into the cliff! According to Ranger Ruth, approximately 800 years ago, and for unknown reasons, the Pueblo Indians moved their civilization from the top of the plateau down with the cliffs. There are hundreds of rooms, with enough space to provide for thousands of people. There are Kivas that appear to be ceremonial, and others that were a living room or common room for the families. They even found a drawing inside one of the towers.It was an amazing thing to see! We also met a really cool lady from Texas. She was 69 years old, had a couple of new knees thanks to her knee replacements, and was traveling around hiking wherever she wanted. We told her we’d look her up if we came to Texas 🤗 She even got a great family picture for us.Mike was especially fond of the French family behind us for the first part of the tour whose children talked non-stop and then the dad who asked 7,000 questions of Ranger Ruth 🤣🤪🤣 Finally he ran out of questions 🤪But we got some great pictures from today – each of the boys taking turns being the photographer 😉🤪❤️

The only thing about climbing down for a tour is that eventually you have to go back up… so here we go…So glad we added this last minute tour in, because it was definitely something to see. Pictures can’t really do it justice.

The drive back through the park was just as lovely, and since we weren’t in a rush we stopped at a couple of overlooks… at one stop, we were about to stop when who comes out of the bathrooms… The Texas Terrors We diverted our eyes and drove away. 🤣😂

The Tower was our favorite overlook because of this gentleman. He didn’t bother to park so others could get by… and then didn’t seem in a hurry to move when he saw us… even making an additional lap around the tower to re-read the plaque! We just got so tickled that we were dying laughing by the time he bothered to get in his car and leave 🤣😂🤣

As we made it back to Durango,we found a FedEx store and started filling our now empty cooler with dirty laundry The plan was to ship the cooler home and save the $30 per bag that the airline charges…well that was the plan until we learned that a 30 pound cooler costs $105 to ship to NC 😳 Um, no thanks. So we’ll be taking our laundry-cooler to the airport tomorrow to go home with us 🥴🤪

(Y’all pray the baggage carrousel in Greensboro isn’t covered in our laundry tomorrow 🤦🏻‍♀️)

We had dinner at the restaurant in the hotel, got packed up… and had one last swim

Now we’re ready for bed and our airport adventures tomorrow.

Can’t believe this is the last night. Since there weren’t any amusement parks or things like that on this trip, we really just had a great time being together. Michael and Leo are growing up so fast, and have so many distractions in our day to day world. It has been so much fun to just be together, the four of us, laughing and spending as much time together as we can before they are grown. It has truly been the best vacation ever. ❤️🤗