Here There and Everywhere

Hiking for Petroglyphs in Mesa Verde

We got up early to head for the Ute reservation park center, where you find tours to take you onto the Ute reservation, only to find it was closed. It’s a beautiful morning, although there are some threatening clouds, so we had to nearby Mesa Verde, stopping at the Cortez welcome center where a kind lady tells us about the Spruce House petroglyph trail, a 2.4-mile trail, fairly easy, she tells us, which reassures me because I am in a skirt and sandals.

We love Mesa Verde. We’ve been here before, and we can see there have been a lot of major improvements since the last time we were there. 

Some of the roads are still not open, due to damage over the winter, but the hike to the petroglyphs is open. 

As we drive into the Spruce House parking lot, there is a great parking spot, and as we turn into it, there is a woman in the next car, pulling things out, and scowling at us like “go somewhere else to park!” AM couldn’t resist chatting her up; it looked like she had her entire household packed in her car and no matter how nice he was, she was crabby and negative in return. We couldn’t help but laugh.

We ask the Ranger at the Museum about the Spruce House trail and he tells us there is one place, just past the petroglyphs, that is a hard vertical climb, but the rest is easy.

It was not. This was one of the hardest hikes I can remember in a long time, with many steep narrow stone ascents and descents.

Just as we entered Mesa Verde, my camera battery had gone, so I only had my phone camera, not my bigger camera, which turned out to be a really good thing. By the time we discovered how hard the trail would be, we couldn’t really turn back, so we made frequent stops to calm our heart rates. Some hikers passed us heading back, some because they had tour times they realized they couldn’t make it if they completed the hike, and some just turned back because it was too hard. 

We gutted it out. There were times we just laughed.

We made it to the petroglyphs, and appreciated the beauty of Spruce Canyon. We were on many narrow little trails on which a false step could result in a long, dangerous fall, which made us very intentional in our foot placement, and slowed our pace. 

Just after the petroglyphs we came to the place the Ranger had described. People were turning back. There were places that required finding a place to plant your foot where you could lift yourself to the next level, raising the other leg. 

That I could do! I do it three times every week, exiting the pool! It is the same movement! We waited for another group to pass us – me being in a skirt and having to raise it to execute the climbing moves up the rocks. We stopped a couple times in the climb just to catch our breaths, to slow our hearts, and to appreciate how difficult this was, and we were doing it!

Once we got to the top, there was a smooth, easy path back to the museum. We took it slow, our thigh muscles were aching from all the ascents and decents, and my hips were aching from the climbs. We were so thankful just to finish the hike, but we were laughing at the description of this hike as an “easy level trail.” We later learned it was listed as a strenuous hike, a description we would agree with.

Just happy it’s over. We made it. We made it!

On the way home, late in the afternoon, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant in Cortez which had intrigued AdventureMan; Gustavo’s.

We really liked it. I ordered three street tacos al pastor, and AM ordered the chicken mole.

We were both delighted with our orders; mine were small tacos with just meat and onion and cilantro, and a spicy sweet mustard sauce, absolutely delicious. AM’s mole was a WOW, with sweet tender chicken with a sauce that was decidedly chocolate but carried a big heat. As usual, we couldn’t eat it all, so we boxed up one of his chicken mole’s and an order of Gustavo’s lemon pie (it was more like a lemon tiramisu, with layers of pastry between layers of a mascarpone and lemon filling, amazing and unusual) to take with us for dinner.

When dinner came, we were still so full we just had a couple slices of the comte cheese and crackers for dinner, and that was enough.

August 20, 2023 Posted by intlxpatr | Adventure, Aging, Beauty, Cultural, Exercise, Geography / Maps, Restaurant, Road Trips, Travel | Colorado, Cortez, Four Corners Hiking and Petroglyphs, Gustavos, Mesa Verde, petroglyphs, Spruce Canyon, Spruce House | Leave a comment