McPhee Resevoir and Anasazi Heritage Center

Wednesday morning found us exploring another new area - the McPhee Recreation Area. The lake is gorgeous and there is also a very nice campground. Sadly though, it obviously doesn't get used much and many buildings have been shut down and weeds have taken over many places. In it's prime it had to be amazing. 

The biggest logging town in Colorado is under that lake. After a fire, it never recovered and most buildings were moved before the dam was built.

We drove around and checked the whole place out and found a 1/2 mile hiking trail. It was rated as difficult but they were wrong :). It was easy, even for Emily, and that's saying something! It was a lovely day to be out, the sky was it's normal huge blue self, the birds were singing joyously, and the sagebrushes smelled sweeter then ever. We met a couple on the trail who is celebrating 25 years of marriage. After chatting with them for a while he shared this with us : When we hike, we can know what is at the end of the trail. Praying is like that too, we can know that we will find Jesus when we pray. Great analogy!

The next destination was the Anasazi Heritage Center. They do honor National Park Passes so we got in free. The outside in itself was stunning!

The bricks were so neat!

The flowerbeds were filled with native flowers, all carefully labeled.

This place had so many artifacts! Pottery, baskets, bone tools, stone arrowheads and tools, and lots more! It's also geared for kids and they have a place where they can weave on a loom, grind corn, look through microscopes, and computers where they can watch videos about many activity's that the Anasazi did. They also have Jr. Ranger books so we took those home to complete and bring back at another time.

Weaving on the loom.

Grinding corn!

In the basement they had a pithouse set up for us to see. Included in this museum was a ton of history about the area as well as exhibits explaining how they sort and date the artifacts they find. Outside is a 1/2 mile paved nature trail. We did not do it yet but plan to when we go back to get the children's Jr. Ranger badges.