Mesa Verde

I really had no idea how large Mesa Verde National Park actually was. I thought it was pretty much just one spot that had some cliff dwellings carved into it. Apparently there are many, many dwellings scattered all over the place. It was incredible to see. We drove around to many of them. At some we just took photos and looked from a distance on them. At others we took Ranger-guided tours so we actually got to crawl around in the dwellings.

Some of the passageways were incredibly tiny and cramped. But they were smaller people than us. I guess the average female's height was 5'0" and the average man was 5'7".

An interesting side-note: One of the Rangers told us that the culture of the Native Americans that inhabited these dwellings was matriarchal. So the women were the ones that inherited everything. Apparently if you were an only daughter or the youngest daughter you inherited all of the wealth and land that your family possessed. Also, when a man and woman got married, the man left his family and had to go live with the woman's family instead.