WEBVTT 00:00:03.370 --> 00:00:06.406 If you're looking for a more adventurous tour, 00:00:06.406 --> 00:00:08.842 I would definitely go with Long House. 00:00:08.842 --> 00:00:10.777 It's actually as big as Cliff Palace. 00:00:10.777 --> 00:00:13.480 It's 150 rooms and 21 kivas. 00:00:13.480 --> 00:00:15.849 Long House is the most in-depth tour. 00:00:15.849 --> 00:00:19.586 It's a hiking tour, as well, so we are going to hike 2 and a quarter miles 00:00:19.586 --> 00:00:20.286 round trip. 00:00:20.286 --> 00:00:23.890 You're going to descend down into a canyon about 150 feet, 00:00:23.890 --> 00:00:26.493 so there is some elevation change, but you'll get to 00:00:26.493 --> 00:00:30.030 actually tour through Long House, climb some ladders, 00:00:30.030 --> 00:00:32.699 see the main water source for the Ancestral Puebloan people 00:00:32.699 --> 00:00:34.300 which is a seep spring. 00:00:34.300 --> 00:00:36.102 It's a litlte bit more of a challenge to get there because 00:00:36.102 --> 00:00:39.305 you do have to walk a mile in order to get into the site. 00:00:39.305 --> 00:00:41.074 And you walk that mile with a ranger. 00:00:41.074 --> 00:00:44.944 You get to go beyond just the basics, you get to talk a little bit more about 00:00:44.944 --> 00:00:47.280 what life was like even before the cliff dwellings. 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:51.184 Some of the highlights of the Long House tour, would number 1, be 00:00:51.184 --> 00:00:53.253 the size of the site. 00:00:53.253 --> 00:00:56.623 Another thing that's really great about this site is you can really see 00:00:56.623 --> 00:00:59.426 how agriculture affected these people here. 00:00:59.426 --> 00:01:03.463 How it allowed them to live together in such large numbers. 00:01:03.463 --> 00:01:06.499 The views, coming in and out of Long House 00:01:06.499 --> 00:01:09.135 just the trail getting in and out is just amazing. 00:01:09.135 --> 00:01:11.404 You get great views down canyon, 00:01:11.404 --> 00:01:15.241 and also you can see a lot of where the fires came through. 00:01:15.408 --> 00:01:17.877 And we continue with the group down into the site. 00:01:17.877 --> 00:01:22.082 We climb up the ladders and we gather around the seep spring. 00:01:22.082 --> 00:01:25.218 The seep spring is very central to the story of the cliff dwellings. 00:01:25.218 --> 00:01:27.420 We now believe that it's those seep springs that 00:01:27.420 --> 00:01:30.223 bring people down from the mesa tops into the cliffs 00:01:30.223 --> 00:01:32.225 to be closer to those water sources. 00:01:32.225 --> 00:01:35.962 It's one of these incredible points of ingenuity 00:01:35.962 --> 00:01:40.333 where you can see the carved little basins in the spring, 00:01:40.333 --> 00:01:44.003 where water would collect, and even from there, 00:01:44.003 --> 00:01:48.274 Ancestral Pueblo folks carved little channels in the bedrock 00:01:48.274 --> 00:01:51.778 to direct the flow of water into what we call "cupules" 00:01:51.778 --> 00:01:55.782 these little depressions, just big enough for a gourd or a clay dipper 00:01:55.782 --> 00:01:57.951 where you can fill your water jug. 00:01:58.518 --> 00:02:00.186 And we continue on through the site. 00:02:00.186 --> 00:02:03.256 We go down a ladder and down a series of steps 00:02:03.256 --> 00:02:06.259 and at the very end, we gather in a large plaza. 00:02:06.259 --> 00:02:10.296 We see, probably by the dance plaza that's there, 00:02:10.296 --> 00:02:13.800 that this would have been a community that did accept 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:17.203 some of the migration coming up from the southern areas. 00:02:17.203 --> 00:02:21.908 In some cases, people say that this is possible to be a Great Kiva. 00:02:21.908 --> 00:02:24.310 If it is, there's a lot of change going on at once, 00:02:24.310 --> 00:02:26.813 and that would have come with those migrants. 00:02:26.813 --> 00:02:28.815 It's above ground, rather than underground. 00:02:28.815 --> 00:02:30.917 It's square, it's not round. 00:02:30.917 --> 00:02:34.154 And it may have been open-air, rather than roofed. 00:02:34.154 --> 00:02:35.889 And it's community-oriented. 00:02:37.056 --> 00:02:40.527 There with my group, I love to construct an image of what life 00:02:40.527 --> 00:02:43.062 would have looked like 800 years ago. 00:02:43.062 --> 00:02:45.765 When the walls were twice as high. 00:02:45.765 --> 00:02:47.967 When they were all plastered on the inside and out. 00:02:47.967 --> 00:02:49.936 When they all had their flat roofs. 00:02:49.936 --> 00:02:52.539 And hundreds of people from across the canyons have 00:02:52.539 --> 00:02:56.042 come to gather to watch the celebration that was taking place 00:02:56.042 --> 00:02:57.510 inside of that courtyard. 00:02:57.510 --> 00:03:01.080 It would have been magical. There would have been a fire going in the middle, 00:03:01.080 --> 00:03:04.684 it would have been reflecting off of all the walls and the people's faces 00:03:04.684 --> 00:03:07.020 who have gathered to watch the event. 00:03:07.020 --> 00:03:10.356 And the sound would have gone down canyon for miles. 00:03:10.356 --> 00:03:12.759 [GROUP SHOUTING DOWN CANYON/ECHOES] 00:03:12.759 --> 00:03:14.827 And you can imagine that sound probably makes its way 00:03:14.827 --> 00:03:16.796 all the way down to Cliff Palace. 00:03:16.796 --> 00:03:19.966 It provides a better sense, again, of what life was like here. 00:03:19.966 --> 00:03:22.702 A lot of people, they simply look at this architecture and they say it's 00:03:22.702 --> 00:03:25.838 strictly defensive, but I think there's more to the story. 00:03:25.838 --> 00:03:28.174 Because when you're standing inside those courtyards, 00:03:28.174 --> 00:03:30.610 and there's a large event happening, 00:03:30.610 --> 00:03:33.513 and the sound is issuing down-canyon, 00:03:33.513 --> 00:03:35.114 they're not hiding. 00:03:35.114 --> 00:03:37.951 It actually seems like a very visible space.