The Rio Grande Southern Hotel is a wonderful place to stay. I should put that out there to start with. It falls into a “don’t judge the book by its cover category.” Or its title page (the inside cover). The outside of the Rio Grande (and its web site) make it look like a sweet, charming, turn-of-the-century hotel with impeccably decorated rooms. It is not that. The inside cover (the living room/lobby) make it look like a cluttered and disorganized business opportunity gone awry. It is not that either. The Rio Grande is a gorgeous home built in 1893, with an addition added in 1902. It was the first hotel in Dolores, Colorado and is now the oldest building in town. There are nine bedrooms upstairs and a restaurant open the public on the first floor.

The Rio Grande has always been an “Eating House,” welcoming day-travelers coming in on the train, as well as overnight guests, including Teddy Roosevelt. For a while, it was the only Eating House on the road between Durango and Rico. Breakfast is included for overnight guests, but Sunday Brunch is a popular meal for restaurant-only guests. We happened to be there on a Sunday and came downstairs to a full house. Within a few minutes, though, Sheila seated us and took our order, and Don got working on our meals.

Reflecting a bit on what led us here to the Rio Grande, I have noticed that there are some nice-looking chain hotels in Cortez. They would have been an option for us for this stop at Mesa Verde. I think two things motivated me to investigate the Rio Grande: price & variety. Our Room #1 has a Queen bed, the sink for the bathroom (oddly convenient and inconvenient, all at the same time), a ceiling fan and a window fan on exhaust. The house doesn’t have air conditioning, but the fans made the rooms very comfortable. The price is $75 per night, or $85 per night on weekends. Wow. You just can’t do that anywhere else. We added to that the kids room with 2 Full beds, with the bathroom in between, at $65 per night. We still spent less money at the Rio Grande than we would have at the Days Inn or Best Western for 2 Queens. In addition, we had quite a different experience at the Rio Grande. Interestingly, it felt more private than hotels we’ve been in. Once inside our little suite, we didn’t hear any noise from anyone in the house, though we could smell the pancakes and bacon as we woke up in the morning. It reminded me of staying at my grandmother’s house, if my grandmother lived in a turn-of-the-century Eating House, that is. It even had a pedestal tub. My Grandma & Grandpa Kuhlmann had a clawfoot tub, but the pedestal was close enough.

Our little friend, Winnie, wasn’t around this morning, but we enjoyed breakfast nonetheless. With Sheila and Don cooking, though there was a menu, we could pretty much order what we wanted to. I had a pancake (huge! The short stack was just one pancake and it was plenty.) and a side of bacon. Austin had a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. Aidan had a pancake and a one-egg cheese omelet. Haley had the Continental Breakfast: her pick of cold cereal, toast, and juice. Hal had his typical omelet with a pancake, hash browns, and bacon. In fact, we ordered enough bacon that Sheila just brought us out a plate to share. Sheila was attentive and efficient as she popped in and out of the kitchen, managing all of her guests.

We were excited to head into Mesa Verde for the day. We realized by the end of the day that this Park experience would be very different than all the others. Each of the other National Parks were focused on natural, God-made beauty, while Mesa Verde’s focus is the cliff dwellings built by Native Americans 700-1500 years ago. We were ready for a change of pace.

Do you remember learning about the Anasazi Indians in your grade school Social Studies text? I recall learning about theis cliff-dwelling people who disappeared from the Southwest around the year 1300. I recall the idea that no one really knows why they disappeared.

We learned at Mesa Verde that this isn’t exactly true. Yes, they were cliff dwellers. Yes, they lived in the area for several hundred years. But, they did not disappear; they moved on. And now their descendents mostly in Arizona and New Mexico. They are the Hopi and and the Zuni and other Pueblo People. These ancestors lived in what is often called the “Four Corners” area, where Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico come together. Mesa Verde is not the only ruins of their civilization, but it is one of the best known. Anasazi is a Navajo word that means something like “ancient foreigners,” “ancient ones who are not like us,” or even “ancient enemy.” It seems that originally, archeologists used the Navajo word, but as they have come to understand where the descendents of these people went, they have chosen to reference the people in a way to that connects them to their descendents because they a) in fact, they are not foreigners, and b) they were not warring people, so were not enemies. They are now known within the Park primarily as the Ancestral Puebloans or simply The People.

The landscape at Mesa Verde is a series of mesas and canyons. “Mesa Verde” means “green table” in Spanish, and there are multiple green mesas in the area. The gate to the Park lies close to the beginning of the Park, but the Visitors Center lies 12 miles into the Park, over and around several of these mesas. You reach them by winding switch-backs up and over and through the mesas and the canyons. We didn’t find the Visitors Center particularly helpful, but that’s probably because we had gotten the map, the newspaper and tour tickets the night before. With some research already completed, we knew where we were headed and what we planned to do. If we weren’t sure what we wanted to do, the Visitors Center would have been very helpful. I will add again, though, that if you come in the night before and want to pop in for some information, try stopping by the Morefield Ranger Station. It is only 4 miles in from the gate and is open until 8:30 pm, unlike the other information facilities that all seem to close around 6:30 pm. We’d had a lovely conversation with Ranger Ali at Morefield the night before, just before she closed up shop. We were glad to not stand in line for tickets and information the next day.

Mesa Verde has ruins of the Ancestral Puebloan culture in several stages. The earliest structure we saw was a “pit house” built around 575 AD. Prior to this, the People were likely nomadic. These modest homes were built on the top of the mesas by digging down a few feet and then creating walls and a roof with wooden poles, leaves and mud. A fire pit was always evident near the center of the main room. Both in these homes and the ones built much later, it was interesting to see a stone slab posed upright next to the fire to deflect drafts and draw the smoke up and out of the roof. Food and firewood was stored in the “antechamber,” off the main living area.

The next stage were single-story and then multi-story dwellings also built on the mesas. This is where we first see evidence of the Ancestral Puebloans’ masonry skills. These villages were built around 750-1100 AD and are the first structures that show obvious evidence of these being the People of the Pueblo. One of the most interesting aspects of these mesa-top communities was the “kiva.” These circular structures are thought to be gathering places for community meetings and religious ceremonies. They contain a fire pit, the traditional deflecting stone, and a ventilation shaft because they were typically built at least partially underground, with the entryway being a ladder down through the roof.

In the late 1100s, the Ancestral Puebloans began to reside in the cliffs alcoves, below the mesas. They continued to farm their staples of corn, squash and beans, which grew well on the mesa tops. They began to build multiple cliff-dwellings, some of which likely housed hundreds of people. It is these cliff-dwellings that Mesa Verde is known for, and they are fascinating to see.

The canyons in the Four Corners area are lush with pinyon pine and juniper trees. As we drove the windy roads through these canyons, we began to notice the little doors in the canyon walls that point to areas where the Ancestral Puebloans built their cliff homes. Many are excavated; some offer tours; others are self-guided. And many others are just there, in the cliff walls, the little 18” x 30” doors (that look like windows) the only external evidence of their existence.