Mesa Verde National Park was probably the most spectacular place we visited during our trip. The park, in south-western Colorado, is based around two large mesas which contain many ancient puebloan cliff dwellings nestling along the vertical sides.
Although you can see many of the cliff villages from viewpoints on the rim of the mesas, three of the largest are only accessible via small, ranger-guided tours. In each case, there is some element of climbing involved. At Long House, seen here, a ladder is needed to get from the entry level to part of the village. This isn’t too daunting but, for someone like myself terrified of heights, the entry to and exit from Balcony House is a pretty daunting experience. On the way in, there’s a 32 foot ladder which we negotiated in the rain of a thunderstorm and, on the way out, a couple of shorter ladders perched over a multi-hundred foot drop. The sights inside Balcony House were worth it but, if you are worried about heights, you may like to think carefully about whether or not that’s the tour for you!