Mesa Verde is a National Park formed for the purpose of maintaining and preserving the ancient cliff-dwellings of Native Americans who once lived in the area. I’ll have to post pictures because it’s hard to explain, but these dwellings are literally carved and built into the caves in the cliffs thousands of feet high. I had to wonder how many Native Americans fell to their deaths with one careless step—just like Jonas nearly did! How many other mothers and fathers before us have caught their breath and then heaved a sigh of utter relief as their child cluelessly ambled back over to safety never realizing what had happened, as Mom & Dad tried to get their hearts back into a normal rhythm?Harold took the bigger 5 on a hike down to one of the dwellings. I kept the 3 littles in the camper. Matthew took a nap and I did a few preschool activities with MaKenzie & Jared. Harold & the biggers came back with lots of neat stuff to tell. The hike had been listed as “moderate” in intensity. There were several ladders 8’ to 10’ that they all had to climb. There were lots of steps. It was about 150 feet STRAIGHT down, then of course STRAIGHT BACK UP. I wouldn’t use the word “moderate” to describe that. Harold said he wouldn’t either! But it was lots of fun for them, nonetheless.
We had planned for all of us to go on a less intense, shorter hike down to another of the smaller dwellings—we even all got to the top of the trail with Jared and Matthew each in a stroller and MaKenzie in the wagon. But as I looked down the steep zig-zagging trail, I just couldn’t make myself take them down. If one of them had bumped out of our hands or our hands got slippery from the sweat and we for some reason let go, there is no way we could’ve stopped them from plummeting over the side of the cliff. After I had my minor panic attack over that thought, it entered my mind that we would have to push the strollers and pull that wagon back UP that steep zig-zagging trail. (For you Oneidians and former-Oneidians, imagine cemetery hill at Oneida times about a hundred.) Needless to say, we decided to skip that one. We had some nice, random, fellow-tourist take our family’s picture at the top of the trail and called it good.
We left Mesa Verde National Park and drove on to Holbrook, AZ, where we had plans to stay on Bill & Lois Jeffers’ ranch. The Jeffers are the parents of Tiffany, one of the volunteers at CAP. When she heard we were planning to be in the area, she told us we ought to go by her family’s ranch to spend at least one night. The kids had never (well, I hadn’t either) seen a real ranch, so we thought that would be a lot of fun. We arrived there around 9:00 pm and Lois had a delicious pot roast dinner ready for us! We couldn’t see much about the ranch since it was already dark when we got there, but Bill & Lois made us feel right at home. In fact, John Wesley, Jonas, William, and Lena all stayed in their house for the night while Harold, Cody, the littles, and I spent the night in the camper.It turned out to be a very long, but very good day. The kids are excited to see what tomorrow holds. A horse-back riding session has been mentioned… we’ll see how that goes. I still don’t trust horses very much.
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