Mesa Verde . . .

This last week we really wanted to take a little trip somewhere since it was pretty much the only time off Josh will have this summer. After realizing that Belize, Hawaii, and other exotic locations were slightly out of reach, the three of us headed off to Mesa Verde National Park. It was a different kind of trip for us, but we had lots of fun. The drive down went great. Ainslie slept for a good part of the drive, and we enjoyed seeing some of what Southeastern Utah has to offer.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see much on the drive. We ended up leaving Provo later than we had hoped, and things were getting pretty dark as we passed through Green River. To make things worse, we made a wrong turn in Cortez, CO (it was too dark to see that the mesa was directly behind us), so we didn't pull in to our hotel until 2 am. Our room was in a great location, but the view wasn't much when we pulled in . . .
After all that sleeping in the car, Ainslie decided it must be morning when we got to the room. The poor little girl was still tired, but she just couldn't go back to sleep. After about 2 hours of intense negotiations we were finally able to convince her that it really was night time, and all of us fell asleep for what was portion of the night was still salvageable. The next morning we enjoyed some delicious breakfast and headed out to see what the park had to offer. We hiked to one of the better preserved cliff dwellings, and were amazed at how the buildings have survived.

We talked to one of the park rangers, and he told us that 50-60 people would have lived in this community. We figure that's probably about how many people live in our apartment building, but we're happy to have indoor plumbing and doors that lock (even if you can hear the neighbor's dance party upstairs at all hours of the night).
There really is a lot to see. Janae got to explore one of the many Kivas.
And, afterwards we went on a little 2.5 mile hike to see some petroglyphs.

The trail took us through some pretty fun little obstacles in the rock . . .
And we got to take a few pictures of the plant life along the way. When we got to the end, we thought the petroglyphs were very impressive. Definitely worth the hike.This family seemed kind of familiar. Judging by the way these parents are waving their arms around, they were probably up until 4 in the morning with their baby. We can sympathize.After the hike, we drove around the park and saw several more cliff dwellings. And we also got to meet some of the local wildlife.
Ainslie was always glad for a chance to get out and stretch her legs a bit. She's become quite the little stair climber these days.
In the evening, we headed into town for some dinner, and we found a great park where Ainslie was able to run around and get really worn out. We were prepared for another rough evening, but when we got back to our room she went to sleep in the crib without crying at all. It was wonderful.While Ainslie was drifting off to dreamland, we slipped out onto the porch and enjoyed the fresh mountain air while we watched a little bit of the Office on Josh's iPod.
Saturday we headed home, prepared for a long daytime drive with Ainslie. With the help of a few new toys (baby's first laptop) and a park or two along the way, we were able to make it home without any major trauma. And, Ainslie even went to bed at a reasonable time that night.

While we were in Colorado we decided it was a very good thing that we decided not to try to take Ainslie to Hawaii (that would have been a VERY LONG plane ride), and we also saw that some pretty nasty storms had caused flooding in Belize. Good thing we ended up picking Colorado . . .