National Parks

A large part of the reason I'm in this area is to see the several National Parks and Monuments here.  Unfortunately, with all the snow, most of the trails are closed. 

Tuzigoot National Monument was the first stop.  Tuzigoot is an ancient village built by the Sinagua culture between 1000 and 1400.  It crowns the summit of a long ridge rising 120 feet above the Verde Valley.  The original pueblo was two stories high in places, with 87 ground-floor rooms.  Tuzigoot is Apache for "crooked water".  The visitor's center was open, but the trail to the monument was closed and covered with ice.


The next stop was the Verde Canyon Railroad.  There is a railroad museum but the main attraction is a 4-hour train ride through the Verde Canyon, traveling from Clarksdale to the Perkinsville ghost ranch and back.

 
Cottonwood is surprisingly good sized; a city actually.  I was expecting both Cottonwood and Camp Verde to be just mountain towns.


Despite the temperatures never getting above the high 20s and low 30s, it was a beautiful drive. The sun was shining and no wind.

Montezuma Castle National Monument - Southern Sinagua farmers built this five-story, 20-room dwelling sometime between 1100 and 1300.  It occupies a cliff recess 100 feet above the valley.

The river is Beaver River, which was used for the water source.













Montezuma Well - It is a lake in the middle of the desert; a limestone sink still fed by continuously flowing springs.  Every day the Well is replenished with 1.5 million gallons of new water.  There is a tiny amphipod, looks like a shrimp but is no bigger than your smallest fingernail, that lives in the Well and is not found anywhere else on earth.  Also unique to the Well is a spring snail and a single-celled diatom.

A pleasant winter walk along the Rim Trail

The next stop was Walnut Canyon National Monument - Dwellings sheltered by overhanging cliffs were home to Walnut Canyon's only permanent inhabitants more than 800 years ago.  The cliff dwellings were occupied for little more than 100 years.






Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument (with snow .... and without)

Sunset Crater Volcano was born in a series of eruptions sometime between 1040 and 1100. Powerful explosions profoundly affected the lives of local people and forever changed the landscape and ecology of the area. Lava flows and cinders still look as fresh and rugged as the day they formed.

Wupatki National Monument

   

And then I stopped to eat at the Galaxy Diner in Flagstaff and stepped back into the 1950s



I ended with a drive through Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona (elevation is like 7,000 ft) but they were pretty snowed in.  The speed limit on AZ 87A was 15-20 mph and between watching for ice on the road and all the potholes, I didn't get many pictures ... but even in winter, it is a beautiful area!

 Of course, Slide Rock and Red Rock State Parks were closed.


Very frustratingly my phone kept shutting off all day (bad battery?) so I'm not getting a lot of pictures, hence the "professional" brochure reprints on a couple of these.