! mile round trip hike on a paved trail with native vegetation and birds - well preserved site that allowed you to feel like you could imagine how it was back in the olden days

Although this Park is open year round, the road conditions may or may not be suitable for the long drive into the heart of Mesa Verde – our day was sunny but cool. Once we parked at the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum car park the temps climbed enough to ditch the sweaters and after hiking down to Spruce Tree House... More

The drive up to the top featured spectacular views of the surrounding region, but the Spruce Tree House topped that by a mile...amazing remnant of an ancient civilization - hard to imagine not only how they accessed this location with only primitive means, but then managed to carve out their living space with primitive tools - mind boggling.

We went here right after our Cliff Palace tour. It was snowing so the little stroll into the site was sort of enchanting. It's a great walk, I would really recommend it. After about 8 minutes of walking we got to the site and wandered around. You can actually climb into one of the covered underground rooms and it was... More

In the high elevation of southwestern Colorado, the walk back to the museum was very tiring. Other than that, the house itself was beautiful. It was hard to imagine living in a house that small all my life. We were able to go into one of the kivas, but unfortunately it was very dark so I could not get a... More

We went there in mid march, so the only opening cliffs are spruce tree and cliff palace..Because we have small children and limited time, we decided to go to the spruce tree.. (+) It's free and self guided, but there's a guide standby there. very friendly and knowledgeable. You may need to check the website regularly, because they put different... More

I don't know how young I was when I first became interested in the cliff-dwelling Indians, but it was a loooong time ago. Finally I had a chance to visit Mesa Verde and I wasn't disappointed. This was such an interesting trek! After parking the car on a very hot sunny June day we noticed relatively young fit-looking adults huffing... More

We had the fortune (in my opinion) to visit in mid-December. At that time of year, this is the only cliff dwelling visitors could tour. We were happy that our tour, one of only three for the entire day, consisted of less than ten people. With such a small group, and a boisterous and knowledgeable guide, the tour was absolutely... More

In November, many attractions in Mesa Verde are closed for the season. Spruce Tree House remains open. After viewing the interesting film at the nearby museum, it is a short, but steep walk on a paved trail down to the site. A warning here - if you go down, you have to walk back up - some older folks were... More