Southwest Canyons and Rainbows Loop {10/5: Mesa Verde part 2, Four Corners}

One week into our trip, Day 7 was our second half of Mesa Verde on Wednesday, 5 October. We backtracked a bit from our hotel in Cortez back to the park, and then onward west through Four Corners and ending up in Page, AZ for the night. (This was that one night that didn't go smoothly I mentioned on my Day 1 post . . . we'll get to the details at the end of this post, I promise. :)

We had tickets for the Long House tour at 10:30 am, so we headed to Wetherill Mesa first thing. When we got there we had time to take a self-guided walk down to Step House and look around there. That was really nice to take it at our leisure with only a couple other people around. We really liked this one.

Anytime there was a ladder involved, it
was a big hit!

We could go up close an personal in a lot of this dwelling.

The view from the step side (opposite the way we came
in).

Our first replica of a pit house, which were also
found in this same cliff overhang, dating hundreds of
years before the bigger stone dwellings that are typical
on the cliffs (the pit houses were more often found on
the mesa).

The steps that gave Step House its name.

We got back from our Step House exploring and the kids had time to turn in their Jr. Ranger booklets and get their badges at the kiosk near the parking lot. Then we headed down the road (wide paved path - and, bonus! we spotted a tarantula on our way! they're active in the autumn, out looking for mates, so it was a good time to see one. not as big as I expected, but still huge for a spider!) to the meeting spot for the Long House tour. This was was guided by a ranger named Kim who was awesome (we actually had heard from her the day before in Cliff Palace at the kiva area). She wasn't in a rush and answered all the questions that anyone had. We got to go back in the alcove behind the structures and rest in the shade while she taught us about the people and the dwelling. Then we moved across a reconstructed kiva roof and down into the front plaza area. She had us all line up across the plaza and shout "ha!" together and listen for the echoes across the canyon. We all thought this was the best tour we did and such a cool house. Five stars!

It was a bit of a hike to get to Long House, 
but nothing we couldn't handle!

First glimpse of Long House.

Yep! We got to do those two big ladders!

Kim our ranger guide cheering folks on as they ascended
the ladder (especially the ones who were afraid of heights).

Just amazing how the rooms were built right up against
the rock "ceiling".

We got to peek inside this multi-story room.

I love all the chinking.

In the back of the alcove.

A seep spring! (Check that off your jr ranger bingo
card!)

Jr. Rangers by the seep spring.

Mano and metate.

Lots of kivas in this dwelling.

Where those people are standing is the plaza where
we stood and made the echoing call.

What a view!

After Long House, we took the long way back to the car through the Badger House community, which is a group of pit houses on the mesa.

Biggest woolly mullein we've ever seen.

I just love this color combo in the fall
in nature.

We eventually made it back to the car (the kids were touch and go, but their legs ended up working all the way back), where we pulled out the cooler and ate our lunch at a nearby table. Then we headed out of the park toward Four Corners. 

We spent a while there, waiting in line for our turn to have a picture in all four states at once, and the kids wandered around the booths buying postcards and looking at other souvenirs.

One of us in each state.

Four states at once!

Pretty tricky!

And this one just because I like his new toothless smile.

So we continued on toward Page, planning to stop somewhere for dinner along the way, but again just pushing through to the hotel. We got settled into our room, pulled together something from the cooler for dinner (I think it was hummus pita wraps?), and then I took the kids down to the pool for a little while and Gregg showered in our room. This room was exciting because it had a couch bed in addition to the two queens, so the kids got to have their own beds! Sam got the hideabed. Cal got the middle queen, and Gregg and I took the one closest to the bathroom. 

After the kids got tucked in, I sat down next to Gregg to read or talk to him or something for a few minutes before I took a shower. When I got up and went into the bathroom, I noticed my pants felt a little damp, but I just assumed it was from sitting down around the pool and taking care of wet kids. I didn't think too much about it. After my shower, I hopped into bed to read some more. I felt dampness under me and realized that the mattress was wet. Soaked, in fact. Yes, it was exactly what you're imagining and fearing. A big yellow spot, soaked into the mattress and the cover, and new sheets had just been put over it and were slowly soaking it upwards. So gross.

So Gregg went down to the front desk to ask for a new room or a new mattress or something. The worker was completely unhelpful and said she couldn't do anything about it right then but she'd make a note to have it fixed the next day while we were gone. So we squished in with the kids, me with Cal and Gregg with Sam, and we all had a rather horrible night's sleep.

The next morning we made sure to check in at the desk again, this time the manager was listening, and they promised it would get taken care of while we were out. We had a marvelous time in Grand Canyon, which I'll tell you all about next, but when we came back to the hotel that evening, we stopped to ask at the desk if the mattress situation had been fixed. She said she had some note the the sheets had been changed, which we were not hopeful about, since that was obviously what had happened before. Just a bandaid on the problem. We got up to our room and the key didn't work, so we went back down to get new keys and asked again if there was a new mattress in the room. She called the manager who showed up a few minutes later (it was late and we were all tired, so all this extra waiting in the lobby was annoying) and went up to the room to check. The worker started the process to switch our room anyway, so we eventually got new keys to the original room and new keys to a new room.

We finally got upstairs to get our stuff out of the old room so we could move down the hall to the new room and the manager was hauling the mattress out by himself, apologizing and promising a refund on the night. We grabbed our stuff, walked down the hall, and crashed in our (clean) beds, and slept quite well at last.

Yes, it was a completely icky situation, but having it be the only issue on our whole trip, with lots of hotels and hundreds of miles of road . . . I think we were pretty dang lucky.