This was going to be our first full day of hiking. We started by driving to the Mesa Top and checking out Spruce Tree House. You used to be able to tour this, but you no longer can because of some damage that is being done. They have to bring in an engineer to assess the damage before people will be allowed back in to tour this on their own.
Therefore, we decided to hike Petroglyph Point which has the largest collection of petroglyphs in the park.
This is a perfect hike for my boys- lots of rock climbing and narrow navigation. When they are climbing over rocks, they don't even realize they are hiking.
These were all of the petroglyphs. We enjoyed looking at them, but knew not to touch them because it can damage them for future generations.
This was the view from the top of the hill. Once we got up there, the hike was less exciting, but the view was amazing. We were done with this hike 2.5 miles later.
After that, we drove the mesa top loop and looked at several of the viewpoints before heading to the Balcony House Tour.
As we were driving the mesa top loop, we saw this guy cross the road and were able to get a good picture. He stood still long enough for us to determine that he was super healthy.
Our first tour was the Balcony House Tour which was only 1/4 mile, but took us back to an original cliff dwelling.
The coolest part of this cliff dwelling is that to enter the dwelling, you had to climb a 32 foot ladder. The ladder made Logan a little bit nervous because he kept looking back down and the ladder kept climbing higher.
After that, we scooted over to Cliff Palace which has over 150 rooms and 25 kivas. This was a very impressive cliff dwelling.
On our way back to the campsite, we saw this guy... the boys were super excited to see the first one of the trip.
After our day hiking the cliff dwellings, we hiked out to knife point from the campground to watch the sunset. It was a beautiful view, but the kids were done in after hiking multiple trips during the day.
My love and I enjoying the sunset with two very wound up little monkeys.
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