Mesa Verde day 3

 The Morefield campground at Mesa Verde has flush toilets and showers, and Matthew and I took advantage of that luxury while the kids slept in this morning. After a pancake breakfast (Abraham's favorite camping meal) and a stop by the camp store, we said our goodbyes to Grandma and Grandpa. This was a new type of experience for us together, and we really enjoyed it.

Today's adventure was the Long House loop, which Grandma and Grandpa had done on Thursday. We had tickets for the 10:30 Long House tour and arrived with only a minute or two to spare. This tour, I thought, was more worth the money than the Cliff Palace yesterday. The tour guide had a lot more interesting things to describe and point out, and we got to walk among the ruins more.

After the tour, we walked around the Badger House community, then explored the Step House, which I thought was the most interesting of the cliff dwellings.

We decided not to do the whole paved trail loop, which turned out to be a fortuitous choice. Having seen everything else there was to see, we drove back to camp. The original plan was to stay another night, go to church, then drive home Sunday afternoon. We had decided though that if we finished our exploring in time, we'd pack up and head home early. We got back to our site around 3pm and managed to break camp just before a massive storm hit. Instead of spending the rest of the afternoon and evening shivering in the tent while it poured buckets, we hit up the visitors center to get Mercy's junior ranger badge, then made it home in time to eat dinner and watch our weekly episode of She Hulk. 

This was the only camping trip we did with all five of us this year, and I'm so glad my family humored me and came along on this adventure. October is definitely the time to go to Mesa Verde. While it got rather chilly at night, it wasn't unbearable, and the weather during the days was glorious. I imagine it would be miserably hot there during the summer. It was fun to share the experience with Grandma and Grandpa, and it was actually really great to get back home with two more days of vacation to enjoy.