Our first day's drive was pretty easy. We drove from Lehi, Utah to Cortez, Colorado which is only about a 6 hour drive. I've made this drive a bazillion times in my life (driving between UT & AZ as a child), but my kids hadn't been here before so it was fun sharing it with them.
We stopped off at Hole N The Rock & walked around the shop for a little bit.
And then we hit Colorado.
One of my favorite trips from my childhood was Mesa Verde National Park in Cortez. We went there several times as kids & I was super excited to share it with my kids.
They were less than enthusiastic about hiking in the hot sun for miles on end. ha ha ha.
But we did it anyway & it ended up being a lot of fun. You can drive most of it these days & only hike to the cliffs you want to hike to. We mostly did the "drive by" dwellings, but did get out here & there to see some of the bigger ruins.
It really is beautiful from the top of those mountains. You can see over 100 miles over 4 states.
But of course the kids' favorite things were the ruins themselves. The Anasazi Indians were amazing cliff dwellers. They built these incredible civilizations INTO the cliffside & lived there for hundreds of years. Me being a history buff, LOVED this stuff. They were an incredible people.
The sun palace was really cool too. It was on top of all the cliffs & you could walk around it, but it has no doors or windows so nobody really knows what it's purpose was.
The cliff palace was the most incredible exhibit in the park. The kids thought it was pretty awesome. We couldn't hike down to it, but we hiked to the cliff across from it so we could get a really great view of it.
After exploring the park for several hours, we headed back to our hotel where we swam for a few hours. It was SO hot there that the water felt wonderful.
1 day down, 4 more to go.
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