{"id":2221,"date":"2011-09-06T12:57:58","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T16:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=2221"},"modified":"2011-09-06T12:57:58","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T16:57:58","slug":"what-i-did-on-my-vacation-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=2221","title":{"rendered":"What I did on my vacation \u2013 Part 1."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"My<\/a>
My first sight of a cliff dwelling.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My head is full of the strangest facts \u2013 and it’s all my parents’ fault.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, they brought a never-ending stream of books into the house. The types of books were often surprising \u2013 I think a lot of the time my parents got them because they were cheap (we didn’t have a lot of money). I read those books from cover to cover \u2013 even the encyclopedia!<\/p>\n

One which totally captured my imagination at the age of about 10 was a book about the cliff dwellings in the South West of the USA \u2013 at Mesa Verde and the surrounding areas.<\/p>\n

I was fascinated by the ancient culture that had built such amazing homes \u2013 and then just vanished.<\/p>\n

Well \u2013 I’ve finally been to those cliff dwellings \u2013 and all I can say is “Wow!”<\/p>\n

\"After<\/a>
After a rain storm on the top of the mesa.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We started our exploration with the dwellings on top of the mesa.<\/p>\n

\u00a0According to the national parks service guides, the ancestral Puebloans set up their homes there about 1400 years ago.<\/p>\n

The mesa top looks pretty\u00a0wild now \u2013 but the Puebloans had farms there.<\/p>\n

They even set up dams to manage the water supply so they could plant corn to go with their wild turkey dinner.<\/p>\n

Then \u2013 for some reason, they gave up their homes on top of the mesa and started building in rock alcoves on the cliffs.<\/p>\n

No-one knows why they moved \u2013 but one thing I am sure of \u2013 they must have had a pretty good reason.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The 'easy' route into the cliff dwellings for the tourists.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The parks service has put in ladders and walkways to enable people like me to get to the cliff dwellings.<\/p>\n

I’m not afraid of heights, but there were times\u2026<\/p>\n

And the original inhabitants didn’t use metal ladders \u2013 mostly they had handholds and footholds cut into the sandstone.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Cliff Palace - largest of the cliff dwellings.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Archeologists who studied the grave sites didn’t find\u00a0evidence of broken bones among the cliff dwellers \u2013 so they assume they seldom fell.<\/p>\n

They must have been much better rock climbers than we were!<\/p>\n

What is even more fascinating is that just a few generations later they suddenly abandoned these homes.<\/p>\n

No-one knows why.<\/p>\n

Archeologists have speculated about failed crops, warring factions\u00a0or disease – but they are just guessing.<\/p>\n

\"Carvings<\/a>
Carvings on the wall of the cliff.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The ancestral Puebloans\u00a0\u00a0left behind paintings and carvings on the wall \u2013 but they never had a written language.<\/p>\n

There’s nothing to suggest an answer to the mystery.<\/p>\n

The descendants of the cliff dwellers still live in the American south-west.<\/p>\n

When asked \u2013 they say their ancestors left the caves because it was time to go.<\/p>\n

Maybe that’s all there was to it \u2013 or maybe there is more that is known only to the Pueblo people, who are keeping their secrets.<\/p>\n

For my part, I left because it was getting late \u2013 and the climb back up was hard enough in daylight.<\/p>\n

If the\u00a0cliff dwellings were spectacular \u2013\u00a0 so too was the landscape.
\n
<\/code><\/p>\n

\"Inside<\/a>
Inside a reconstructed Kiva - a ceremonial place.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Webmaster John and I took about a thousand photographs (seriously \u2013 we did).<\/p>\n

Every time we turned another corner \u2013 there was even more breathtaking scenery (the storm clouds helped).<\/p>\n

Sometimes reality doesn’t live up to the fantasy\u2026 you know what I mean. When we finally achieve a goal, it’s not quite as good as we had hoped. Well, that wasn’t the case for me this time.<\/p>\n

The cliff dwellings were every bit as magical and fascinating as I had always dreamed and the landscape even more beautiful.<\/p>\n

\"Leaving<\/a>
Leaving the national park.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s great when that happens\u2026 and this was just the start of the holidays.<\/p>\n

The next stop saw us faced with men in uniforms, carrying guns \u2013 as we accidentally almost invaded the site of the Manhattan Project \u2013 more on that later.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My head is full of the strangest facts \u2013 and it’s all my parents’ fault. When I was a kid, they brought a never-ending stream of books into the house. The types…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-travels","category-reading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-zP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}