Flagstaff Area

We went on another bus tour with the most informative guide yet.  He even spoke some Hopi, Navajo & Apache.  We viewed Oak Creek Canyon, saw Arizona Cyprus, toured Sedona (finally a big city! - OK, more like a tourist trap...)  and then toured the Montezuma Well and Castle. 

Our guide, Randy in Oak Creek Canyon

An Arizona Cyprus - more like a Juniper

Sedona

Montezuma's Well was a 2 part adventure.  On the top was the big round well - so big that one inner face of it had a cliff-dwelling!! 

It is fed by a natural spring that produces 1.5 million gallons of water a day.  We descended to the bottom and experienced a 15 degree drop in temperature along with the cool serenity of rushing water.

 

The Ancient People dug an irrigation ditch about 1000 years ago to irrigate their crops and provide water to their homes.

Both Montezuma's Well & Castle were mis-named by early explorers - Montezuma had nothing to do with it and they were actually built by the Ancient people around 1050.

The next day we learned that most of the Ancient peoples lived in pueblos built in the desert.  We spent the day touring several sites with my cousin Garnet, her roommate Sheila and Vince, who all joined us for the day.  The first site is Wukoki.

We toured a much larger site - Wupatki - that had up to 200 rooms in it.  This area was inhabited by Apache until 1970s.  The National Park service had taken it over in the 30s and then decided that the Apache's sheep were destroying the land (!?!?) and made them all leave.  It was very interesting, in the Visitor's Center, to see interviews from 2005 by people that had lived there and been driven off.  I thought all of that had stopped in the late 1800s!!!

Sunset Crater is a volcano that erupted about this same time - 1050.  We couldn't go to the top, but the lava flows and ash deposits were impressive.  To see how long an event like that effects the land - and at the same time, how quickly nature takes over.