Gila Cliff Dwellings

We've seen cliff dwellings in two other states now, Colorado and Arizona, and these dwellings were really amazing.

For those of you who don't know what these are, some of the Native Americans in this area built houses into the cliffs, accessible only by rope/wood ladders or hand and foot holds carved into the rocks. In the 1300s for no known reason, they abandonded these dwellings and went somewhere else, we don't know where. Maybe this is where the UFOlogy and the Native American history of New Mexico all comes together... (Edit: I am kidding about this but some people really believe the natives were spirited away by aliens. Strange but true...)

Unlike the other dwellings we've visited, you can walk right through these dwellings and see them up close. We did tour a dwelling at Mesa Verde in Colorado but it cost extra on top of the admission price and it was ranger led, so you went with a group and didn't get to spend the kind of time you wanted to just looking.

At the Gila dwelling, you have to hike up to the site, about a mile and several hundred feet above the canyon floor, and it was pouring rain the whole time.

In some of my pictures there are white lines all over the picture from the flash reflecting off the rain. But the great thing about the rain, other than feeling like I was in a swamp instead of the southwest,

Is that we were mostly alone in this great monument. We got to sit in the huge arched window of this dwelling where people had sat centuries before us and look out over the valley and watch the rain fall.

And we didn't kill ourselves hiking up the slippery slopes of this monument! Bonus!