Should you Book a Mesa Verde National Park Cliff Dwellings Tour?

This month I am sharing our time at Mesa Verde National Park!! We were there just over two weeks ago and had such a great time exploring the park and surrounding areas. A trip to Mesa Verde National Park is truly a trip back in time (and no, not just back to the 1980s, which is apparently the look I was going for that day; lol). If you plan to visit the park, but you may be wondering if you should book a Mesa Verde National Park cliff dwellings tours. Our vote would be yes, but there are a few tips and tricks.

Mesa Verde National Park is home to Pueblo cliff dwellings. Many of the original pueblo structures date back to 650 AD. These earlier dwellings can be found at the top of the cliffs and can be viewed by a drive through the park, with many stopping points to hit along the way. It wasn't until the early 1100s that they began building the dwellings inside the cliffs themselves. These pueblo cliff dwellings are some of the most well preserved dwellings still visited today. 

May Currently & a Giveaway

Happy May! 

Spring finally seems to be here. 

Being from Florida I am pretty much used to just about one season, but now that we are traveling full-time it has been so strange to experience this thing people call winter! 

Linking up for a May Currently! Here is a peek at our world right now:

{Celebrating} Adding a new state to our count; HELLO, UTAH!! And checking a big one off the bucket list... a post about our time at the Grand Canyon coming soon...

{Creating} A YouTube video from our time in Mesa Verde. I am running a bit behind this week and it's not up in time for Road Talk Tuesday, but you can catch last week's adventure in Grand Junction, Colorado! It was an awesome week filled with great hikes and yummy wine... 

We are so close to hitting 500 subs!! Will you be number 500?! We would love your support as we try to grow this little space!! 

5 on Friday & Giveaway Fun!

Happy Friday Friends!! 

We've been bouncing around right and left the past few weeks, so I feel like I would play a little catch up around here with some Five on Friday randomness! 

Here's a little peek at what's been going on around here lately... 

We're LOVING ColoRADo!! 

If you read last week's post, then you know we are currently in Colorado. The scenery out here is incredible!! We are currently at an RV park near Mesa Verde National Park. Unfortunately, the cell service out here can be hit or miss. Since we work on the road we have had to be very careful about where we stay. We found a park that claimed to have decent cell reception and wifi; however, that ended up not being the case and we had to quickly move parks. Our current view is a car wash, so while it isn't a winning view, we are at least able to work (which keeps gas in the truck, so ultimately I guess it is a win). We are going back into the national park this morning to do a tour of the cliff dwellings and we are pretty pumped!! We will share more about Mesa Verde NP soon, but for now our number one tip would be to make sure you plan at least two days if you are going to visit. The tour tickets for the day can run out really early. We were in the park by 11 on Wednesday (during off-season) and there were no tickets left. Thankfully we were staying, but there were others who were pretty bummed because they were only there for the day. You can still see the cliff dwellings without a tour ticket, but you can only go into them with a ticket and guide (cost is $5 per person). 

Spring Skiing at Steamboat Springs Resort and Old Town Hot Springs

Spring in Steamboat Springs, Colorado!  

We've been in Colorado for about two weeks now and are LOVING it! When a friend gifted us with free lift tickets to Steamboat we booked it northwest just as quick as we could! We are now further east (almost to Utah) in a town called Grand Junction and are enjoying the warmer days and gorgeous, other worldly (at least for these Florida-natives) hikes. We will be sharing those soon, but Steamboat Springs can't be passed up. Here's why we loved spring in Steamboat Springs so much...

Steamboat Springs Is Easily Accessible 

This was the first time driving hauling Delilah the Dream Machine up really high inclines, so we were very grateful that it's pretty easy to get into Steamboat from I-70! The resort was also so gracious and allowed us to park in their lot overnight, when we found out we wouldn't be able to stay at the state park we were planning on. This is not customary and probably won't work during busy season, but it never hurts to call and ask. We pulled into their overflow late after the runs were closed on Sunday, were able to walk to the gondola that took us to the top of the mountain to ski Monday, and we're gone once the slopes closed at the end of the day. 

6 Hours in St. Louis || Things to Do in St. Louis Missouri

Happy Friday!! I'm just over here singing... 

"Meet me in St. Louis, Loius, meet me at the fair; 
don't tell me the lights are shining any place but there." 
Anyone else's mom sing this to them as a lullaby?! No, just me?! 
Honestly, I have never seen the movie it came from, but I love Judy Garland so maybe I should. Anywho...

We had plans to head south through New Orleans and Texas, making a slow journey to Colorado. However, we decided to head to Colorado earlier than planned, to try get in some spring skiing, and started booking it west with the quickest route we could find. This route happen to lead us right through St. Louis and we were able to spend a day exploring the "Gateway to the West"! More accurately we were able to spend just 6 hours exploring it! We were staying at a state park about 45 minutes away from downtown St. Louis, and because we teach in the mornings, we weren't able to leave the camper until just before noon. 

We had originally only planned for two definite stops; the Gateway Arch and then do the Anheuser Busch Brewery tour and were going to spend the rest of our time stumbling across different spots and enjoying a long lunch somewhere. Well, that plan quickly changed when someone reminded us about the City Museum. So instead, we skipped lunch and crammed as much as we could into our 6 hour window.