Mesa Verde was the highlight of my trip to the Southwest. I had decided I wanted to see it after reading about it in a book about wonders of the world. Although I was looking forward to touring the cliff dwellings, I had no idea just how much there was to see at this wonderful site. We drove into the park first thing in the morning and spent one very long, perfect September day there, but we could have spent more time easily. Entering the park involves a 25-minute drive up into the hills, which is lovely in its own right because of the views. There are many interesting ruins all along the tops of these hills, but the truly spectacular ones are the famous cliff dwellings built into the walls of the canyons. There is a surprisingly large number of these structures; in fact, there is one viewing point where as you scan the length of a canyon you can see at least half a dozen dwellings all along. The more you look, the more pop out.

The tours are excellent, and are indeed a bargain. I'm admittedly an acrophobe, so I was a little nervous about the ladder-climbing necessary, but my desire to see everything was stronger than my fear of heights. Because we arrived in September when the crowds had thinned out considerably, we were able to purchase tickets to tour both Cliff Palace and Balcony House, which one is not able to do in the height of tourist season due to demand. Unfortunately, on the other hand, the Wetherill Mesa Road was closed for the season, so we missed out on a considerable portion of the park, including two more cliff dwelling tours.

My husband and I had a terrible time trying to find the UNESCO plaque; even the ranger we asked wasn't sure where it was! So, we asked someone at the visitors' centre where we purchased our tour tickets. We told her of our interest in WHS and she said that it was really lovely, and that we were the first people who ever asked her about the plaque. It turns out it was just outside the entrance to the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum (we must have walked past it a couple of times, but I guess we weren't paying attention).

Mesa Verde is a World Heritage Site that is definitely worth a couple of days' visit; I was looking forward to this stop on our trip the whole time, and was not disappointed.