When you leave the Visitor Center you have a short drive to the park entrance where you pay your fee or in my case show your Senior Pass along with a picture ID and you enter free. From this point it is roughly a 21 mile drive to the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum: however, before you ever reach that location you have numerous wonderful sites to see. From the Chapin Mesa you can drive many more miles getting to the various locations. The road is very steep in places with numerous extreme turns and twists. The elevations range from 6,000 to over 8500 feet. It seems that you will decend several thousand feet on 6% grade or better only to climb back up. There is one tunnel. As you wind around the mountains to actually get to the mesa you have to realize it is a mesa with relatively flat area. The cliff dwellings are in the side of the mesa several yards below the rim of the mesa.Throughout the park there are many pull out spots, overlook spots and places where you can stop and see interesting exhibits, structures or artifacts especially of those who lived on top of the mesa as well as see the surrounding calley and peaks. I will try to explain this as I show photographs. There are numerous trails of varying distances and degrees of difficulty. I took many of the less lengthy trails. There is a tram ride which I took that takes you to view some of the mesa top dwellings sites. There is a half mile or so trail that you follow to see the Mesa Top areas. As I recall only two of the cliff dwelling sites required a ticket and the tour was conducted by a park ranger. That is the only way you could access these sites. I did not attempt either of these because of the strenuous nature of the climb down and back. One in particular required you to crawl through a small tunnel on your hands and knees and squeeze between some tight spaces between rocks. From the starting point of one of these guided tours I was with the the people as they gathered and received their instructions from the ranger and then watch them as they walked down to the site and see them as the ranger was telling them about the site. This was one of the overlook points where you could see the cliff dwellings without actually climbing down to the site. They are fantastic. You could see the people as they came back up from the site. Coming up they walked a steep trail. I saw several stopping to catch their breath and I guess rest their legs. The only strenuous part of the return back up was you had to climb a 32 rung ladder as the last thing to reach the mesa top. It took some people a while to make it up that ladder but they made it and there was not any rush to speed people up as they climbed out. As tired as some of them were I don't think any amount of rushing them would have helped. After seeing this I could have done this tour but it was getting to late and you could only buy your ticket back down at the park visitor center. I missed that experience but I got some great photographs of the site.
Tour Group On The Way To Dwelling Site
I hope someday to be able to post a lot of pictures so I can tell this story in an orderly manner to make sense. Hope springs eternal. As always I ask you to remember the God love you and so do I.Grandpa Bill
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