The First Day of School: Third and First Grades

The boys started back to school on Monday morning! We had a wonderful summer this year, with two vacations, a few camps, and plenty of down time to play and read and explore, but twelve weeks is a long break and I think we were all ready for the new school year to begin. There's just something about the rhythm and routine of the school year that is comforting and familiar. 

The boys both have great teachers again this year and there were so excited to get back to learning and seeing friends every day at school.

Will is off to third grade 

and Henry is in first grade.

Here's to another fantastic school year!

Colorado 2014: Day Six (and Will's 8th Birthday!)

Our last day in Colorado was also my big boy's 8th birthday!

Will requested French toast for breakfast, so that's what he got!

Will had opened most of his presents at his party, but we brought along a couple of small gifts to open on his actual birthday. He got the new Okee Dokee Brothers CD

and a puzzle book called Maze.

Once breakfast was over and the kitchen cleaned up, we headed back to Mesa Verde to explore the other half of the park. The park is huge and there's no way to see everything in one day, and our $15 entry fee was good for an entire week, so it was a no-brainer to spend our last day of vacation there.

On Monday, we visited the less crowded Wetherill Mesa, where the only modes of transportation are foot trails and trams. 

We arrived just before 10 am and were able to hop on the very first tram of the day. All the other visitors were going on a guided tour of Long House, but we were heading to the Badger House Community. 

We were the very first visitors of the day and our tram driver told us to keep an eye out for yellow-headed collared lizards that are bright aquamarine. We didn't find any, but we did see regular little lizards,

lots of flowers,

and even a few birds. 

We also saw a lot of fire damage from the Pony Fire of 2000. Mesa Verde has seen five large wildfires, usually caused by lightning, in recent years, and more than half the park has been burned. 

We learned that the heat from the fire was so intense that the earth was basically sterilized and trees have not been able to grow back (even when humans try to help by planting seeds). Shrubs like the yellow rabbitbrush below grow well, and the yucca is twice its normal size in this part of the park. 

Along the trail, we saw four mesa top sites (pithouses and kivas), including the stockaded village below.

The Wetherill Mesa was a quiet, peaceful place.

After walking the Badger House Community Trail, we hopped back on the tram and got off at two overlooks to view, from afar, the Kodak House

and the Long House.

After our tram tour, we took a hot hike down to Step House, where we saw a pithouse from around 600 AD 

as well as Classic Pueblo period cliff dwellings.

  

Step House is unique because the Ancestral Puebloans actually used rocks to create steps down to their home, rather than relying just on hand- and foot-holds. The rocks below show the steps of Step House.

 It is a quiet, beautiful place.

After spending the morning exploring the Wetherill Mesa, we headed back up to the center of the park to find lunch. Our final hike of the day was fortunately under cloudy skies and the temperature was a good 10 degrees cooler than it had been earlier in the day.  

We took a self-guided walk to visit the Far View Sites, which included Far View House, four villages and a dry reservoir (also called Mummy Lake).

Love this boy's toothless grin!

I happened to glance down at my watch at precisely 2:05 p.m. (3:05 in Texas), which is exactly the time when Will was born. We all grabbed him in a big bear hug and wished our big boy a happy 8th birthday again. We love this kid!

Far View House was our final stop.

After our last hike, we promised the boys ice cream as Will's birthday treat. Fortunately, there was ice cream available at the park and it was the perfect way to end our visit to Mesa Verde and the boys first-ever visit to a national park! Happy birthday, Will!

Back at our house, the boys relaxed and watched a movie while Gene and I hung out on the porch, reading and sketching and enjoying the quiet of Colorado.

We were so lucky this year to be able to take a second vacation, and we thoroughly enjoyed spending time with wonderful friends, hiking and exploring the great outdoors, and just being together as a family. Colorado was a lovely place to visit and we can't wait to go back!

Colorado 2014: Day Five

We spent our fifth day of vacation, from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m., exploring Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is in southwest Colorado and is known for its many cliff dwellings. The Ancestral Puebloans lived and farmed on the mesa top starting around 600 AD, but they moved to the cliff dwellings in 1190. By 1300, the Ancestral Puebloans had left Mesa Verde, possibly due to drought. The cliff dwellings were discovered in 1888 when two ranchers were searching the canyons for stray cattle.

Our first stop was the Visitors Center, where we took this photo, bought tour tickets, signed the boys up for the Junior Rangers program, and learned more about the people of Mesa Verde.

You can visit much of the park on your own, but there are three cliff dwellings that require tickets for ranger-guided tours. Will read up on everything in the visitors' guide the night before, and he chose the hour-long guided tour of Cliff Palace for us. 

Cliff Palace is one of the largest cliff dwellings in the park. It has 150 rooms and 23 kivas and was home to over 100 people. Some of the walls and buildings have undergone restoration work, but much of the site is original. It is an amazing place to visit!

The tours at Mesa Verde are not for the faint-of-heart. Our tour took us up four ladders, but other tours require crawling through tunnels and climbing a 60-foot ladder. Ours was definitely do-able.

The Ancestral Puebloans used sandstone, mortar and wood to build their buildings. The climate is so dry that the wood is preserved, and archaeologists used tree-ring dating, or dendrochronology, to date the buildings at Mesa Verde. The Ancestral Puebloans also took advantage of natural boulders as foundations; the one below has two large cracks that have been stabilized from below.

This T-shaped window is typical of the cliff dwellings.

While we took stairs and ladders and paths to reach Cliff Palace, the Ancestral Puebloans would have climbed up the cliff face, using hand- and foot-holds in the rock.

After our tour, we happened upon a Ute Indian couple selling fry bread. It was the perfect snack for our starving boys! 

Will had also picked out a hike for us to do in the morning. We walked the Soda Canyon Overlook Trail, a 1.2 mile round-trip trail with amazing views of Balcony House and the canyon. 

As you can see, the terrain is very different from Pagosa Springs. It was drier and much more desert-like.

And it was hotter too! Our car said it was 88 degrees, so we made sure to drink lots and lots of water.

After a much-needed lunch break, we walked down to visit Spruce Tree House, another cliff dwelling.

We actually got to go down inside a kiva with a reconstructed roof to see what it was like.

We saw lots and lots of lizards everywhere.

After visiting the museum and completing their workbooks, the boys were sworn in as Junior Rangers.

We ended the day with the Mesa Top Loop Drive. We got out to see a couple of pithouses

and then called it a day! 

We had a very full day and learned and saw a lot of new things, but we were more than happy to return to our rental house, crank up the A/C, and relax for the rest of the evening.