September 14, 2015 Tour of Balcony House and views of other dwellings

Monday, September 14, 2015 Tour of Balcony and views of other dwellings

Our day started out with it raining but as we got closer to the Balcony House the rain started to lessen.  I had a plastic bag for my camera and off we went.  At this house there were the usual stone steps and wooden ladder that went up 30 feet.  On top of all of this we had to go thru a crack in the stone and a couple of small tunnels on our hands and knees.  We made it through without any problem.  This house was different from the Palace one.  This was more of a house rather than a meeting place.  It is a 2 story structure that has 38 rooms and 2 kivas (kiva is a common room for the clan or family).  This house was on the east side of the mesa whereas the other one was on the south side.  They used the balconies to move from one room to another.  

After this tour we continued on through this side of the park as tomorrow we are going to drive to the other side for another tour.  We saw many more houses, towers and a temple.  This was a very educational tour for both Mike and myself.  It was a good day and we added 3 more miles to our hike total.  We also learned about Pinyon trees and their nuts.  Sweeter than Pine Nuts. 

Stone stairs and the 30 foot wooden ladder

Mike going through the crack

We had to down through this opening

Balcony House

The balcony part of the house

steps to climb to the next floor

The tunnel

Mike coming out of the tunnel

House of Many Windows

Hemenway House

Square House Tower

Sun Temple

A Nice Turkey

A handsome lizard

Spruce Tree House

Alicia check this one out different colors

This is a cone with pinyon nuts in it

Pinyon Tree with the cones on it

These are the nuts with a hard shell on them

Finally the nut and it is sweeter than pine nuts