Two National Parks in one day!

I picked up Brent in Durango, and we decided to spend a couple of days down here in southern Colorado before heading back to Denver. This morning we headed off to Mesa Verde (National Park # 1), where we took a tour of Balcony House. We had to climb 3 ladders to get there - these people took their security seriously. But they had a lot of cool stuff in their cliff houses. Balcony house is named for the "porches" many of the rooms may have had. It's speculated that the eaves you can see at the left were covered with reeds and clay, then used to sleep or sit out on, just like a veranda! The cliff houses were out of the sun, many of them had a spring or other water source, and, of course, a ceremonial kiva. They actually seemed like pretty nice places to live!

We stopped in Telluride for lunch, which was much as we remembered it from when we started our bike trip there years and years ago. Still a nice mountain town. This time we took the main road through town all the way through, and discovered that it takes you through a neighborhood full of big houses, to a really nice view of Bridal Veil falls. We stopped, but you could see the road switch-backing again and again and again. It looked really neat, like it would be an incredible (but really hard) bike ride.

From Telluride we headed to the Black Canyon on the Gunnison River (National Park #2). It was gorgeous, and the sun was setting. We took some short walks to the edges of the canyon, which was SCARY high - my dad would have had a heart attack. We did most of the scenic drive before we got worried about being in a National Park on a Friday night. It turned out that we shouldn't have worried, cause there was tons of camping at the campground. We slept well!

Kim