Three and a half weeks of valuable summer traffic passed by while the gates of Mesa Verde National Park remained closed.
School starts soon, and after that comes the shoulder season.
The monsoons have begun, finally, and afternoon thunderstorms are bound to hamper tourism. Few visitors who saw Mesa Verde in flames caused by lightning are likely to want to stand on top of that mesa in a storm. That is the trouble with an economy heavily dependent on the expenditures of visitors rather than residents. Sometimes the visitors do not come and the money does not flow. It is difficult to plan for such years, inevitable as they are.