Ancient Cliff Dwellings

About 10 miles south and west of Flagstaff is the Walnut Canyon National Monument, with a mile-long loop trail into the canyon that passes several cliff dwellings, all about 1,000 years old.

The story of how they came to be is interesting.  Most of the Sinagua (ancestors of the Hopi) lived on the plains around Flagstaff.  But about 1,000 years ago the area suddenly became a very active volcanic field, producing more than 600 volcanoes.  Who knew?

   
The largest of the volcanoes is a part of the San Francisco Peaks.  Today it is 12,633 feet high, but before it blew its top it had an elevation of about 16,000 feet. 

At any rate, the point of all this is that the natives of the area moved away, some to Walnut Canyon, to escape the eruptions.  Walnut Canyon wasn't far from all the volcanic activity, but it offered protection.

Like many of the canyons we have seen on our trip, the canyon was made by a river.  It includes hard and soft rocks, and the river cut into the softer material, leaving protected ledges.  It was on these ledges that the Sinagua (literally "without water") built their homes.

Walnut Canyon is about 400 feet deep:

On the loop trail, we dropped into the canyon quickly:

The first view we had of the cliff dwellings was by looking across the canyon to the other side.

We rounded a corner, and suddenly, we came upon the first of several dwellings and storage rooms:

A panel shows how the people lived.  These dwellings are at 6 to 7,000 feet in elevation, so it does get cold here in the winter.

Below is a photo of the ceiling of a dwelling, which shows the black left by the smoke from the fire pit, and also shows areas where chunks of stucco have fallen.

Some of the dwellings were better preserved than others:

 
The canyon is lovely, with a wide variety of plants and interesting rock formations:

This is Gamble oak, named after William Gamble of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia:

On the sunny side of the canyon one finds prickly pair cacti:

As we ascended back to the rim, we saw more dwellings across the gorge:

On top of the rim were dwellings of another period of time, like those we saw on the Grand Canyon rim:

Near these dwellings was a Kiva, or ceremonial pit, partially underground.  At the Museum of Northern Arizona (in Flagstaff), we learned that archaeologists have found remnants of surprisingly colorful and sophisticated murals painted on the walls of one of these Kivas.  Below is a reproduction of the mural, more than 500 years old.  The ladder was used for entering and exiting the Kiva. 

Beautiful!

Mystic Sedona

Why am I writing this at well past midnight, you may ask?  Because I had hot chocolate a couple of hours before bedtime and am still on a caffeine and sugar high.  When will I learn?

When I first heard of Sedona Arizona many years ago, it seemed to be a quiet place, newly discovered.  I pictured in my mind a big open valley surrounded by red rock formations, with a few people doing yoga.  I wish I had seen it then, it must have been beautiful.  It still is, but the large valley is now filled with businesses, shops, housing developments, wide boulevards and gated communities that encroach upon those red rock formations.  It is a bustling metropolis.  Does this seem right to you?  A part of me wishes it had been turned into a national park before the developers took over.

Can you imagine having Sugar Loaf Mountain in your back yard?  I think it should belong to the world.

 Despite all this, I enjoyed visiting Sedona anyway.  It was worth seeing, and there still are areas that remain undeveloped.

We started off the day by driving through Oak Canyon on the road from Flagstaff to Sedona.  Oak Canyon itself is stunning, but offers only a glimpse of what is yet to come.

We quickly found a road that led out of town and to a local park.  The formations here were as beautiful as any we have seen on our trip so far.

 

Do you see the house in the foreground, below?  Why do those people get to live there??

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We came to a road that led to ancient Indian ruins, but you can only travel the road with a guide.  The ruins are on an Indian reservation.  We will have to come back again some day to see those.  We turned around and headed back to town.

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We found a restaurant with huge picture windows where we could eat and watch the sun bathe the rocks in brilliant red and orange hues as it set:

A truly magical place, and we didn't even look for the healing vortexes that people talk about!

Meteorites?

Next stop, Flagstaff.  And not far from Flagstaff is Meteor Crater.  Why did we go?  Because it was there, and we could.  I can't come up with a better reason because it is, after all, a big round hole in the ground.  And not nearly as big as the Grand Canyon.

I did learn some interesting things about the crater.  For example, it is not the largest, oldest, or newest meteor crater in the world.  But it is the best preserved, because of its location in an arid desert.

I also learned that the meteor itself was not nearly as large as the resulting crater.  In fact, it was much, much smaller.  But because it was made primarily of lead and nickel, it was very heavy.  When it hit the earth, the kenetic energy created by the heat and speed of its trajectory into the earth's atmosphere caused it to drive a path into the earth, and then to explode like multiple atomic bombs.  In 10 seconds flat, millions of tons of rock, dirt, and meteor were blown out of the hole and onto the surrounding landscape.  Parts of the meteor have been found as far as 6 miles away!

The meteorite was half the size of the parking lot where the RVs and trucks are parked, in the photo below.

One other item of interest:  The explosion was so powerful that rocks at the bottom of the crater were blown to the top of the crater, so that the oldest rocks are sprinkled above younger rocks.  The white rocks in the photo below are the oldest rocks.  They used to be buried a several hundred feet beneath the younger rocks.

One more thing.  I learned that a meteor is a rock hurtling through space.  A meteorite is a meteor that has hit a planet.

Good stuff!