In "Colorful Colorado", my first stop was Mancos State Park along the San Juan Skyway, and in close proximity to the Mesa Verde National Park. My camp site was gorgeous but on my 2nd night, my closest neighbor was 2 miles away! For the first time in 8 months, I slept in my car one night because I was too alone in the woods! Sometimes my imagination is just too wild!
I spent 2 days at Mesa Verde NP which preserves nearly 5,000 archeological sites of the Puebloans who made it their home from about A.D. 550 to 1300. While they primarily lived on the mesa top for over 600 years, sometime in the late 1190s, they began living in pueblos they built beneath the overhanging cliffs. Nearly 600 of the sites found in Mesa Verde are cliff dwellings.