Part 6: Mesa Verde, CO
OR
Journey with a Busload of Ancient OnesGo to Part 5: San Juan Skyway, CO
Go to Part 4: Pagosa Springs, CO
Go to Part 3: Taos, NM
Go to Part 2: Santa Fe and Las Vegas, NM
Go to Part 1: Albuquerque and Carlsbad, NM 
After overdosing on the high Rockies (see Part 5), we switched landscapes and ended the day with a long, slow, winding drive up the great mesas of the ancient Pueblo Indians. The road curved and curved and twisted and turned and eventually dropped us on the dry, flat mesatop, in a group of low, small buildings, each one carefully set on three-foot stilts.
We checked in to the Far View Lodge and found our room, in a remote cluster of buildings far from just about everything. The room was lovely, and the view was excellent (although not as good as numerous rooms near the office, but the staff won’t acknowledge the difference). But all by ourselves, in a pod of empty buildings, things got a bit creepy. The ice and drink machines in our area hadn’t even been turned on yet. We collapsed in the room, which was stylishly devoid of TV, Telephone, or any other electronic diversions, and drifted off to sleep listening for the sounds of the Mesa Verde Axe Murderer. I envisioned a park ranger possessed by an ancient Anasazi demon, wielding some sort of masonry implement.
The next morning we reported for duty at the Far View Lodge office, where the Aramark tour guide picked us up in his bus. Almost immediately, I was surrounded by a blizzard of grey hair. I looked around carefully, and  determined that with the exception of one couple in their 40’s, I was the only person in a 600-foot radius that doesn't remember conserving rubber for the war effort.
I am in my early thirties, and I try not to be snobbish about it. Really. Well, most of the time. But climbing on a bus with 26 people who don’t have any idea what was so cool about R.E.M. back in the early days, people who don’t remember Bono when he had the same hair as the girl in the Lee Press On Nails commercials, people who have never, ever, in their lives squeezed into the back of a car without air conditioning and rocked out with their junior-high-school friends to the sounds of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”, people who for gods sakes actually REMEMBER vinyl…a few of them, ok. But I was surrounded. Outnumbered. And they’re tougher than they look. You should see them run interference for the bathroom.
This truly was the the tour of The Ancient Ones.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, our tour guide was a fellow in a lime green cowboy hat. This is a problem because, as everyone knows, men in lime green cowboy hats CANNOT SHUT THE FUCK UP. They go ON and ON and ON and ON…I spent the entire morning trying to block The Ancient Ones on the way to the bathroom and mentally blocking out the tour guide’s endlessly droning voice by imagining Janet the Snake eating them all and burping clever remarks afterword.
Yeah, well, not all of us can afford a good shrink.
See, it turns out you don’t need to hire the Aramark Endlessly Guided Tours when you go to Mesa Verde. Even though the lodge employees had led me to believe otherwise on the phone months ago.You can just stay in the lodge and buy your tickets at the ranger stations, or even online at the NPS reservation system. Then you can drive yourself to the trailheads, and it all works out just peachy, at your own pace. And if you want ONE HOUR of DETAILED INFORMATION on a partially excavated MUD PIT, you can buy a book from the excellent selection in the visitor’s center.
Pay attention, folks. These Aramark folks are the ones to which Bush would love to hand over the entire national park system. But back to our story…
We did eventually get to some beautiful ruins. The first set of real ruins, though, we could have seen on our own without any tickets at all: Spruce Tree House. It’s open all day, and a ranger is down there to keep an eye on things and answer questions. Right now it's surrounded by fresh green spring oaks.
Unfortunately, Lime Green Man yakked so much at the MUD PIT he rushed us through the Spruce Tree House (we had half as much time there as the mud pit) and nearly gave half of our Ancient Ones heart attacks on the way back up the hill. We then sat in the bus for fifteen minutes, bathed in diesel fumes, while he sorted out his failure to report two vegetarians to the lunch supplier.
Apparently here in Aramark-Land, “vegetarian” means “pile of lettuce”. And piling lettuce takes much, much longer than you think it should.
I don’t mean to be too hard on Lime Green Man. He was a good speaker, and knew his subjects. But Aramark’s schedule for the tour was ridiculous, and no tour guide could have done much with a pile of mud for AN ENTIRE HOUR. It was very basic stuff—very condescending, and exactly like being in kindergarten, except less interesting. I wanted to strangle him. No tip for you! Amazingly, some of The Ancient Ones thought he was great. I have to wonder what these people do for fun. It must involve dentures.
Ah well. We did love the Cliff Palace, where a real ranger of Hopi descent (Hopi people are believed to be some of the descendants of the Anasazi) showed us around:
We also overlooked some other dwellings, like Square Tower House, my favorite:
These buildings were build between 1000 and 1300 AD, before they were abruptly abandoned, possibly due to drought and changing religious beliefs. The latter is especially intriguing, as the modern Pueblos—particularly the Hopi—are more religious than most Native American tribes. The majority of Hopi follow the Kachina religion, which is as highly developed as any branch of Judeo-Christianity (in contrast, most Navajo are Christian). It is a religion that centers much around finding salvation through migration from evil, possibly explaining some of the historic Hopi migrations from one place to the next.
Next installment: We change our plans, and decide to go back to the Colorado Rockies for a few more days. Springtime in the Rockies, right? Oops. Mother Nature decides to throw us a white, fluffy curveball.
6:39:03 AM
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