{"id":761,"date":"2018-08-19T17:10:01","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T17:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=761"},"modified":"2018-08-19T17:17:11","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T17:17:11","slug":"mesa-verde-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2018\/08\/19\/mesa-verde-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Mesa Verde, Colorado…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sue and I stopped at interesting spots on our way home from Tinfiny Ranch earlier this month, and one of them was Mesa Verde National Park. \u00a0 I first went there on the 2005 Three Flags Rally with my buddy Marty.\u00a0 On that visit, Marty and I were only there for a quick stop, and I knew it was a place that needed more time.<\/p>\n

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At the Mesa Verde National Park entrance. It would be another 1000-ft climb and 14 miles of glorious twisties to get to the good stuff.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mesa Verde is just outside of Cortez, in southwestern Colorado.\u00a0 It’s a great little town.<\/p>\n

The whole idea behind Mesa Verde National Park is that Native Americans lived in advanced cliff dwellings about a thousand years ago.\u00a0 It’s real Indiana Jones stuff.<\/p>\n

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A shot I showed on Facebook a week or so ago. Folks told me it looked fake, and I needed a photo with some people in it to give a sense of scale.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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As requested.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The place was amazing.\u00a0 We were up on a huge mesa looking down into dramatic canyons, and these dwellings were built into overhangs and crevasses in the canyon walls…<\/p>\n

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The Tower structure. Several of these little villages had a tower like the one you see in this photo. Maybe the chiefs lived there?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another hamlet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A view from across the canyon at another set of dwellings, this time with my 70-300 lens. All of the other photos were with a 24-120 lens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While we were there, we met a nice young guy named Tom, a Canadian artist traveling through the US on a motorcycle…<\/p>\n

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Captain Tom…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Tom’s ride, a rented Honda Africa Twin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tom was an interesting man and a world traveler.\u00a0 He gave his card to us and I visited Tom’s website<\/a>. \u00a0 He’s been to many of the same spots Sue and I have visited, including Turkey (one of the world’s best-kept tourist destination secrets) and southeast Asia (another best-kept secret).\u00a0 You should take a peek at Tom’s site; it’s awesome.<\/p>\n

Cool stuff, to be sure. \u00a0 One last Mesa Verde photo today, folks…my signature selfie…<\/p>\n

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In the painted bumper of my blue Subie…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When we were planning this trip, I asked Gobi (that’s Joe Gresh) what he recommended on the ride back to California. One of his suggestions was the Petrified Forest in Arizona. \u00a0 That’s next, folks. \u00a0 Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sue and I stopped at interesting spots on our way home from Tinfiny Ranch earlier this month, and one of them was Mesa Verde National Park. \u00a0 I first went there on the 2005 Three Flags Rally with my buddy Marty.\u00a0 On that visit, Marty and I were only there for a quick stop, and … Continue reading “Mesa Verde, Colorado…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,89,139],"tags":[175,174,81,173,176],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feel-good-stuff","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","category-native-american-ruins","tag-africa-twin","tag-captain-tom","tag-colorado","tag-mesa-verde","tag-national-park"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":766,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}