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Tour To Cortez

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We stayed in the small town of Cortez, CO. It was a nice quite town with good 4th of July fireworks. We ate at Destination Grill. It's next to the Holiday Inn. The food was really good and it wasn't crowed. If you go take some time look at the pictures that they have hanging up around the restaurant. Cortez is about a 20 minute drive from the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park. We had a 9:00 a.m. tour that left from Far View Lodge. We read that we needed to arrive really early because traffic in the park was bad. The lodge was about 30 minutes inside the park. There was no traffic that early in the morning, so we got there early. We had time to look around the gift shop and look out at the Far View the lodge is named after. If you have a tour this …show more content…

I highly recommend this tour because we got a lot more information on the park than we would've gotten if would have driven around the park ourselves. With the 700 years tour we got to take a bus around the park with a very knowledgeable guide. We got to stop a different kevias and learned how they were built. We also got to go down into Cliff Palace. This is a ranger led program. Our guide was from Tennessee, but he knew so much information about Mesa Verde and Cliff Palace. I recommend touring Cliff Palace and the rest of Mesa Verde during the morning if you're visiting during the summer. We toured Cliff Palace at 10:30 and it was complete shade. Cliff Palace is not a hike that you need to take if you have heart, hip, knee, or shoulder problems. This hike requires climbing down steep stairs and climbing ladders. There is one short ladder before you get to Cliff Palace, and then there is a very long ladder when you leave Cliff Palace. Bring water when you come to Mesa Verde, even in the morning. Also be mindful of altitude changes. Cliff Palace is located at a 7,000 foot attitude. My house in Tennessee is located at 440 feet. So it's easy to get winded even if you're not really doing that

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