Mesa Verde and Art Towne

On the way back from the hospital, Gary turned right and up a small road. “I’ll show you a bit of Mesa Verde,” he said. “We’ll talk to Dad, and then we’ll go home.”

Mesa Verde looked like something from a science fiction movie. Strange, misshapen bushes lined the road and grew here and there on the mountainous countryside. The snow didn’t quite hide the furry silver leaves of these bushes. When I asked, Gary told me they were sage brush. We drove up a winding road and through a tunnel and finally we arrived at a low one-story building with a large parking lot. Gary showed me a collection of tiny sandstone ruins hiding from the snow under a stone overhang, and looking like oversized doll house remnants, then he took me up a small path to a large, empty parking lot. The information building at the far end of the parking lot looked more like a monstrous box than a building to my culture-shocked eyes. In the empty building I learned about who had inhabited the ruins, but I still couldn’t wrap my thoughts around the fact that people had actually lived there. They were Anasazi Indian ruins. Gary proudly told me that in the summers the whole area would be swarming with tourists, and then his dad would be very busy. 

We drove on to the maintenance buildings. Gary’s dad wasn’t busy and took us to the restaurant. He ordered me a hamburger, which was larger and had a lot more meat than the few hamburgers Gary had introduced me to in Germany, at the A&W close to the army barracks. 

Tomorrow you'll experience church through the eyes of a German girl, newly transplanted to Colorado.