On our way to Cortez, we stopped for a night in Tuba City. The main highway is the dividing line between the Navaho and Hopi reservations. I had read about Tuuvi Cafe on the Hopi side so we decided to give it a try for lunch. We ordered a Hopi taco which was basically a tostada made with meat chile on homemade frybread - it was delicious. We also tried the hominy stew which was made with mutton and served with frybread - very tasty!

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Our young Hopi waitress was a fountain of information about the Hopi. First she informed us that because the Hopi never switched to Daylight Savings Time, there was a one hour time difference on the two sides of the highway. After answering our many questions about the village, she told us to feel free to drive around so we could see Meonkopi, her village. What an education!

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Route 160 turned out to be a very scenic drive. There were lots of rock formations like Church Rock as well as an electric rail line in the middle of nowhere that evidently brings coal from the mines to the Navajo Power Station.

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Mesa Verde National Park was created in 1906 to preserve the archeological heritage of the Ancestral Pueblo people. We drove some 20 miles to reach the top of the cuesta which is like a mesa but sloped rather then flat where some 600 cliff dwellings are located.

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Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwellings in North America. It was constructed primarily out of sandstone, mortar and wooden beams. The sandstone was shaped using harder stones, and a mortar of soil, water and ash was used to hold everything together. "Chinking" stones were placed within the mortar to fill gaps and provide stability. The doorways were relatively small because at the time the average man was under 5' 6", while the average woman was closer to 5'. The Cliff Palace contains 23 kivas (round sunken rooms of ceremonial importance), and 150 rooms and had a population of approximately 100 people.

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This structure is call the House of Many Windows but the openings are actually doors since cliff dwellings didn't have windows. This dwelling originally had 11 rooms with a kiva.

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Paula was surprised to learn that the natives used the threads off the leaves of the yucca to sew.

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Every place we stopped along the road we were able to see ruins! We are so lucky that our government preserved these ruins so we could enjoy and marvel over the cultures that came before us.

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Tonight found us in town at the Cultural Center enjoying some native dances performed by the local Ute Tribe. Tryna couldn't resist trying the drum!

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We were incredibly lucky to be at the Cultural Center on a night that Sam Sandoval, a Navajo Code Talker was speaking. Sandoval was one of 418 Navajo Code Talkers trained by the U.S. government to send, receive and confirm military communications as the Allies battled the Japanese in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. Secretive, speedy and accurate, Sandoval helped design and memorize the 813-word Navajo code. It not only was faster and more reliable than Morse code, but more importantly, it couldn't be broken by Japanese intelligence.

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