Mesa Verde and the Wild Wild West

Well it’s safe to say that our Mesa Verde get away started out with a bang! Literally… We hit a deer in our new truck on the way down to Mesa Verde! I was actually talking to Brooke on an app called Marco Polo and caught the whole thing on video. It’s a funny video and I would share it but lets just say that it isn’t a very family friendly video 😉 .  We were VERY lucky and Brady was able to slow down enough that it didn’t cause too much damage.

We decided to stay in Durango, Colorado in the Strater Hotel downtown. This historic hotel was built in 1887 and has been renovated with antiques to look the part. It was dreamy! I really love the history of the Wild West so to walk into the Strater Hotel and feel like I walked back into history was a lot of fun! My favorite part about this hotel was the fact that this is where the western author Louis L’Amour wrote a lot of his books. He would request room 222 because it was right above the Diamond Belle Saloon and the honky-tonk music  helped ‘set the mood’ for his books. Growing up, my dad loved Louis L’Amour books, He had almost all of them. I remember one year I found one of them that he didn’t have and I was so excited to get it for him as a Christmas gift.

Mesa Verde is one of the National  Parks that I have been dying to go to for at least 5 years. Since we are getting ready to move, we decide that we better go or else we were not going to get a chance to go. It was as cool as I thought it would be! I love the history behind Mesa Verde, I would go into further detail but that would make this post the longest post ever (this is already the longest post ever). It is pretty amazing that people just built their little communities up in the cliffs and they managed to make it work. It is really cool to walk through where people once lived and try to imagine what they did on a day-to-day basis.

We had an appointment to go on a tour of Balcony House at 2 so in the mean time, we went on a random hike to see some petroglyphs. After the hike we headed over to meet Ranger Kate for our tour of the Balcony House.

After Exploring Mesa Verde, we sat down in the Diamond Belle Saloon and listened to the live music. It was a lot of fun, even Brady enjoyed it!

On our way back home we stopped at the hot springs in Pagosa Springs and enjoyed a little soak! We had such a good time on our little weekend get away and I am so thankful we got the chance to check Mesa Verde off of my bucket list.  Sorry this was the longest post ever. If you’re still reading this, thank you for sticking around!

How was your Easter weekend?