Mesa Verde National Park Bingo

Long ears and a calm walk. Scan the brush at the edge of a parking lot, early or late.

Mule deer are named for their ears, which are about three-quarters as long as their whole head. Those big ears catch faraway sounds and also let heat escape to keep the deer cool in the desert.

Look for a dark shape moving through the grass at the edge of the campground loop.

The National Park Service has clocked wild turkeys flying 55 miles an hour and running 25. The farm-raised kind can barely get off the ground; the wild kind goes up into a tree to sleep.

A plain blue-gray bird in a noisy flock. Watch one fly from a pinyon to a juniper.

Its beak and the bare skin around its nostrils are shaped for prying seeds out of sticky, resin-covered pinecones.

Shaggy bark and a round crown. Find one growing straight out of bare rock.

At Craters of the Moon, Utah juniper grows in the park's lower-elevation lava country, alongside the more dominant Rocky Mountain juniper.

Find a pine with needles in pairs and a cone that holds fat pine nuts.

Pinyon-juniper woodland is one of the largest plant communities at Mesa Verde.

A lizard with a black collar and a bright green body, sunning on a rock.

A collared lizard can run on just its two back legs when it needs speed, tail out for balance, so it looks like a tiny running dinosaur crossing the rock.

A dark raptor circling a thermal, wings held flat. That flat glide is how you tell it from a vulture.

Denali has one of the highest numbers of nesting golden eagles in North America, with at least 95 pairs setting up territories along the northern foothills of the Alaska Range each spring.

A dark bird tilting in the air with its wings in a shallow V. The bare red head is the tell.

A turkey vulture's sense of smell is so precise that scientists have measured it detecting certain scents at just a few parts per billion in the air.

The largest cliff dwelling in North America. You see it from the overlook, then walk it on a ranger tour.

The largest cliff dwelling in North America, about 150 rooms and 23 kivas set into a sandstone alcove, built by Ancestral Pueblo people between roughly AD 1190…

A six-mile paved drive with short trails past pithouses, pueblos, and overlooks of the dwellings across the canyon.

A 6-mile paved self-guided loop on Chapin Mesa, free and open year-round when weather allows, with short paved spurs to twelve overlooks.

View only, from the overlook behind the museum. Look for the curved alcove arch above the rooms.

The third-largest dwelling in the park, about 130 rooms and 8 kivas and one of the best preserved, per NPS.

A flat loop through surface villages on the mesa top, with low stone walls and a dry reservoir.

A cluster of Ancestral Puebloan surface villages on the mesa top (Far View House, Pipe Shrine House, Coyote Village, Megalithic House, and a dry-laid reservoir)…

A wide row of rooms along a ledge on Wetherill Mesa. Ranger tour only, and a long drive in.

The second-largest cliff dwelling in the park, a wide row of masonry rooms along a sandstone ledge on Wetherill Mesa, per NPS.

Go before the tours. The exhibits and artifact cases lay out who built the rooms, and when.

A small in-park museum built in 1923, with dioramas and artifact cases that interpret Ancestral Puebloan life, per NPS.

The highest ground in the park at 8,572 feet. Find the survey marker and name one range you can see.

At 8,572 ft, the highest point in the park, topped by a fire lookout and reached by a short paved path from the parking area, per NPS.

A rock-art panel at the end of a rough trail with steep edges and loose rock. Not an easy walk.

A 2.4-mile loop that ends at a large Ancestral Pueblo petroglyph panel, the one front-country trail at Mesa Verde where Big and Little can see rock art up close…

The adventurous tour: a 32-foot ladder, a crawl tunnel, and a 65-foot climb out. Book it 14 days ahead.

Walk down into the alcove with a ranger and stand beside a kiva. The tour is the only way in.

Sit through the film before you walk anywhere. Watch how the film ties the rooms to the people who trace their roots here.

Ask at the visitor center. Finish the pages, then get sworn in as a Junior Ranger.

Frame a cliff dwelling inside its sandstone alcove, with the canyon floor below it.

Photograph the wooden ladder against the stone wall. Wait for the light to reach the rungs.

Frame a pinyon pine and a juniper together. Needles in pairs on one, scales on the other.

Find a mule deer standing on pavement or gravel, ears up, and take the shot from a distance.