Dolores giant onions, Durango, Mesa Verde

Overnight in Dolores, had a look at the “Spruce Goose” a weird looking train thingy, one of only 5 built around 1920, it was used as a mail and goods train running 204 miles between Dolores and Silverton daily, it was decommissioned in 1951.



Cliff Palace

 

Cliff Palace with people for size comparision,
about 100 people would have lived here

 Today we went to Mesa Verde, where the Anasazi Indians built cliff dwellings around 1200 ad, this one was discovered around the 1880’s,  it had been abandoned for around 600 years, they moved on to a more southerly location because the area was too harsh and they exhausted the site by over working the fields and cutting down all the timber for construction and fire wood, apparently the winter in this area can last up to 6 months with plenty of snow
.
This one above  is called Cliff Palace, the other below is called The Windows, how they got there has us mystified, they must have flown in......4-5 holes in the cliff face . There are over 4700 archelogical  sites in the area. At its peak they predicted that there would have been a population of about 30,000. As this race didn't leave any written records it is all speculation and a lot of unanswered question, all we can say is that we are lucky , what a hard life our predecessors had.
                                                                         The Windows
Last night we went into Durango what a great little town, lots to do, we went to a couple of bars with entertainment, tomorrow we will look around in the daylight and probably head off to New Mexico later in the day or tomorrow.
Highlight of the trip so far is finding this huge Big Daddy onion in Dolores, grown by a local farmer who likes big things, weighed over 3 lbs or 1.5 kgs.