Thursday, June 16, 2022
Mesa Verde National Park, Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness
It was only 49 degrees this morning. Hard to believe that by the afternoon, we'd see the hottest temps of the trip!
Twenty minutes after leaving Dolores, we reached Mesa Verde National Park. This national park was created to preserve the dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo people, who lived here on the mesas and in the cliffs for over 700 years.
Mesa Top Ruins Road climbs a high plateau along a cliff edge, offering expansive vistas along the way. From Park Point, at 8,572 feet, you can see all the states of the Four Corners Region: Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona.
Mesa Verde National Park
Jana above Spruce Canyon
Mesa Verde has two main areas that can be visited by road, Chapin Mesa and Wetherill Mesa. Where the entrance road divides, we took the left fork toward Chapin Mesa and Mesa Top Loop Road. There are 11 stops along the six-mile Mesa Top Loop Road, at excavated pit houses, mesa-top pueblos, and overlooks of impressive cliff dwellings.
Oak Tree House
Sun Temple
My favorite stop was Square Tower House. This cliff dwelling includes the tallest standing architecture in the park, a four story, 27-foot-tall structure. A short trail leads to a very close overlook of the complex.
Square Tower House
Another highlight is Cliff Palace, North America's largest cliff dwelling, with 150 rooms and 21 kivas. The Ancestral Pueblo people moved to the Mesa Verde region around 550 A.D., eventually abandoning the area in the late 1200s. Cliff Place would have been one of the later habitations.
Cliff Palace
After four hours at Mesa Verde, we backtracked east almost to Durango before turning south to New Mexico. By 3:30, we'd checked into our hotel in Farmington. By now, the temperature was over 100 degrees and the sun was almost directly overhead, so we decided to bask in the air conditioning for a while before heading out on our next adventure.
Later, we drove 45 minutes south of Farmington to the Bisti Badlands, part of the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area. After reaching a high of 106 degrees, we were happy to see it cool off to 97 by the time we started our hike at 6:00 p.m. By that time, the sun was low in the sky, so it's not as bad as it sounds. Still, we carried LOTS of water.
Entering The Twilight Zone
The Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area is an area of heavily eroded badlands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and very much off the beaten track. The weathering of sandstone in the dry washes has formed all kinds of interesting hills, strange hoodoos, and other weird formations.
Bisti Badlands south wash
Dry as a bone
Tom traverses
Serious sandstone
This evening, we hiked the south wash, aka the Bisti Badlands Trail. This is not so much a trail as a generalized wandering through the dry wash to whatever catches the eye. Tom kept a map app open and I periodically checked Alltrails, but it would be hard to get lost here - just climb to a high point, and you should be able to find your way back to your car.
Interesting erosion
Fanciful hoodoos
"Cracked Eggs"...
...a/k/a "the Nursery"
Bisti is badass! In two and a half hours, we hiked 4.6 miles. In that whole time, we hardly saw anyone out on the “trail.” There were a few people boondocking back at the parking area, however. Not the worst place to camp, if you can stand the heat.
Almost intact petrified log
Petrified wood chunks
Red Hill as the sun sets
Since we didn't get back to Farmington till 9:30, we feasted in our hotel room on a couple of cans of ravioli. Fine dining indeed!
Lodging: Brentwood Inn & Garden, 600 East Broadway, Farmington, New Mexico. We had a huge room with a king-sized bed and breakfast in the morning. At 63 bucks, this was the cheapest room of the trip.
Curious decor of Brentwood Inn
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