That's Interesting…

Mesa Verde is simply amazing. There are at least 11 cliff dwellings that you can see; Five that you can tour. The cliff dwelling above is called Square Tower House. The dwelling we toured is called Spruce Tree House, and it was the only dwelling open to visitors. The other cliff dwellings are open to tours later in the year, when the summer tourist season hits full swing. These cliff dwellings were built by the Anasazi (now supposedly called Ancestral Puebloans by the politically correct) around the 12^th century. The Anasazi left no written records, so archeologists have to guess why they came, built such structures, and why they left, but they seem to have alternated from living on top of the mesa to living in cliff dwellings, to eventually leaving, maybe from drought and an exhausted food supply. However, I’m sad to have been weaned on Indians living in tepees instead of in houses like this or like the ones in Central America.

Spruce Tree House



Me climbing into a kiva (ceremonial room)



An unrestored kiva



An Anasazi KitchenAid (grind that corn!)

So, Nikon has descended into the valley of suck. Sorry, I am going to rant for a bit, and then I’ll get back to the trip. We are driving around Mesa Verde, trying to get to the spectacular “Sun Temple”, stopping every 5 seconds to take more pictures of cliff dwellings, and my camera batteries die in the middle of a shot. Which is fine, since I subscribe to the “digital cameras should take AAs” school of thought, and I have a bunch of rechargables. So I pull two out from my case and pop them in. My Nikon happily starts up, and makes a wonderful musical startup noise. Which I had turned off last year when I bought the camera. And now comes the great part:

In the middle of a shot. Every time I turn on the camera (which was about fifteen times). And now my camera is hosed. Hosed because I don’t have INTERNET ACCESS or the MANUAL to look up what the aptly-named “system error” means.

Update:

It looks like this error does exist. The manual says that this helpful error means that the internal electronics of the camera are malfunctioning. The remedy is to take out the batteries and replace them with a fresh set…and if that doesn’t work, take the camera to your Nikon dealer. I’m assuming that a new system board for my camera, plus repairs, would come the about $200 more than the camera is worth. So, since this is the third set of batteries I’ve tried, I can safely assume that I might as well chuck my camera off a cliff. Which I will be seeing many of in the next few days. It will be tempting.

I’d never heard of Mesa Verde before Sandy suggested we go there. However, I had heard of the Anasazi Indians. I had also heard of cliff dwellings. It turns out that cliff dwellings were made and dwelt in by the Anasazi and Mesa Verde in Colorado is a national park with lots of them. The Anasazi also are a mysterious group of Indians in that they built magnificent and haunting structures, but seem to have abandoned them for some inexplicable reason around 1300 AD. On a side note, I find it interesting that most of the national parks we have visited so far seem to have a town within 10 miles of the park entrance. It’s just convenient to stop in a little town for gas or food, leave, and then see a “Mesa Verde National Park – 10 miles” sign as we leave town (kind of true in the case of Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point. The reason we even went to Canyonlands is because I saw a sign at the end of Dead Horse Point saying “Canyonlands – 9 miles”).