Sedona - Tonto Natural Bridge - V Bar V- The GRAND Canyon!

We spent many days in the Sedona area. 

Due to Spring break there has been a lot of people.  Some days I think we spent more time in the car trying to get from place to place than we did sight seeing and hiking but....we managed to get our shoes full of red dirt! 

 So much to see and such a beautiful area. 

We would drive to areas where there were not sooooo many people and hike!

I am glad Al likes to take lots of pictures....it gave me time to catch up with him....

There were lots of shopping areas in Sedona, but one stood out to us....the Tlaquepaque Village. Lots of arts and crafts, statutes, fountains...was a nice area to relax and walk around.  We spent a whole afternoon here going from store to store.  Very pleasant area.

In our last post we talked about the Sinagua people there pueblos, cliff dwellings, and of course the petroglyphs.  The V Bar V Ranch Petroglyph site was one of the highlights for us.   There were over 1000 glyphs here.  This site has been studied and it has been confirmed that the Sinagua people maintained calendars to track the equinoxes and solstices.  They were here around 1150 to 1400 AD and this site is unique as only these peoples were here  Most petroglyph sites contain glyphs from several different eras and societies.  Because this site is only of the Sinagua they have studied it in more depth.  Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and passionate!  We spent half a day here just listening to him.  He showed us the concentric circles and snake like glyphs here and explained how they were used as a calendar. 

There were two boulders that cast a shadow across the glyphs at different times of the day.  We were here on March 20th.  One day before the spring solstice.  He pointed out to us how the rocks would cast a shadow on certain circle areas.  He pointed to the spot of the solstice, one day away.  Yes the shadow was right on.

Along with the explanation of the prehistoric system of maintaining a calendar on the cliff wall he also pointed out many different glyphs.

If you have followed our blog you know we like petroglyph sites.  This one in particular due to his knowledge and enthusiasm was the most educational site for us.  How did they discover the way to create a calendar on a rock wall using two boulders that cast shadows upon their markings and how did they know how to place their markings to be so accurate?  Goose bumps!


On another day we drove over to Payson to see the Tonto Natural Bridge State Park.  Another beautiful area with apple trees in blossom. 

The bridge is a natural rock bridge carved out by the water and erosion.  There was a rather steep hike to the bottom where you walked on a platform up under the bridge.  It was like seeing and open cave.  Very cool. 

On the way home we drove through the towns of Pine and Strawberry.  Very scenic mountainous drive.








Our next stop was Williams Az.  This was our base camp as we visited the Grand Canyon. 

It is still Spring Break and the traffic was awful until the last couple of days.  We went from having to wait in line to go through one of 5 lines to enter the park to being able to drive right in yesterday without any lines.  Our first day here was a bit overwhelming due to the crowds.  We thought we could just stop into a lodge to grab a nice dinner...NOT!  Our cereal had to last us until we got home.  We were hungry...we went back the next days armed with more of an understanding of the system and......we packed sandwiches.  Might be old but we caught on!  I think we stopped at every view point along the rim with the exception of two. 

 crazies on the edges......

Some days we could drive our truck and stop other days we parked the truck and rode the parks free buses.  We were worn out at the end of each day.  To our best guess we walked at least two miles a day, plus walking through all the many lodges, stores, etc  It is beautiful here.  Took lots of pictures too.  Every day we did see elk but were not always able to get a good picture of them due to traffic.  I was surprised at how many Ravens we saw here.  We did not see any of the California Condors, but we saw Ravens!

 You can see the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon here.  I could have added soooo any more pictures!  Overload!!!  But so pretty.

Tomorrow we head to Flagstaff for a few days, then west on I-40 as we slowly make our way back North.  Looks like lots of snow up there, plus a few weather patterns to watch in the south central states.  I think we will just slow our pace down and who knows what else we will run across.  I already have a full itinerary...the painted desert....volcanic crater....meteor craters.....Keeps AL busy!

Verde Valley ancient ruins and petroglyphs and Sedona!

We have been in the Sedona, AZ area for about two weeks now and have been sightseeing almost every day....except laundry day...  The weather has been sunny, but this last week while still sunny is a bit cooler.  Today our highs are in the mid 50's.  Hey we left 80 and 90 degree weather fussing it was too warm.  hmmm shouldn't have fussed.
Our first week we stayed at Deadhorse Ranch State Park.  From here we had a great view of the old mining town of Jerome.

Jerome was once a huge mining camp of about 15,000.  It is considered a ghost town...but people have restored parts of the town and there are a lot of artsy boutiques here now.  They built houses and buildings where ever they would fit.

We also toured Jerome State Park while in Jerome. 

This is a museum that was once the Douglas family mansion, it tells of the mining days with lots of displays.  The drive up to Jerome is on a very steep winding road with some switch backs.  Awesome views.  In fact we have driven that road about 4 times this week....kind of like it.
This week we have been staying at Point of Rocks RV Park located in the town of Prescott by Watson Lake.  The lake here is so pretty.  Love the granite boulders.

We are staying in an area that is called The Verde Valley.  This area was once home to people they call the Hohokam and Southern Sinagua.  These peoples were hunters, gatherers and farmers.  They built and lived in homes that are called pit houses and pueblos or cliff dwellings.  Next photo is of pit houses at Tuzigoot.  One family lived in each room, they have not rebuilt all the walls.  Walls would have been higher and would have had thatch roofs.  The residents entered through a hole in the roof.

The Verde Valley means Green Valley and provided these peoples water, farm land, and animals to hunt and is known as an area with the best preserved ancient ruins or housing of these people.  We have visited Tuzigoot, Montezuma Castle, and Montezuma Well National Monuments and the Palatki Heritage Site.  Montezuma Castle and Well contains some of the best preserved cliff dwellings/pueblos.

Picture to the left is of the cliff dwelling at Palatki.

Without great detail these people were in the area as early as 700AD and left around 1400AD.  They are not sure why they left the area, it could be due to drought conditions known to have occurred in that time period.  They did move to Northeastern areas of Arizona and at some point either left again or integrated into other tribes.  But they left behind many artifacts, petroglyphs, and pictographs along with ruins of their housing.  Overkill on ruins pictures but this area has so many.

No one knows for certain what the petroglyphs and pictographs mean 100%.  You can identify certain animals or tell if it is a human, but they are not sure why these drawings were done.  Are they a story or just a drawing.  This picture shows pictographs in black.  They are black because the paint they made was from a mixture of ground rocks with color and animal fat.  On this rock due to a fire the pictograph color burned away but the animal fat burned the picture in the rock.  We were told by our many different guides that different native tribes have different interpretations of what the symbols mean.  Some meanings are the same others are not.  At any rate I think it is fascinating.
There are so many pueblos or cliff dwellings in the Verde Valley that you can see them in many areas that are not open to the public.  We took the Verde Valley train ride, a four hour tour of the valley following the Verde River. 

 People in the open car as the train headed into a huge tunnel blasted in the rock.  It was a cool and drizzly day....but so fun!  Took a picture of the other end of the same train we were on as we went over a huge bridge.  Had some water spots on train window so a bit blurred.  Oh well!!

Along the train route you could look up into the cliffs and see more ancient ruins all along the route.  The train ride was very pretty and very interesting.

Oak Creek is another major river in the area.  Along Oak Creek we did visit the Red Rock and Slide Rock State Parks.  Both are very scenic.  We took a short hike at Red Rock that went along Oak Creek. 

The scenery here is mostly red rocks and the water is a vibrant green.  Very pretty!  Al was a slow poke on the trail as he is always trying to take pictures catching water in motion.  When there is water around I can actually hike ahead of him...that doesn't happen too often!

Slide Rock was really neat.  Here the  water rushes through red rock sluices creating a natural slide for summer swimmers.  This was once an apple orchard homesteaded in 1906 that the state purchased.  We noticed that the apple trees should be ready to bloom in another week.  So we might have to go back for that cuz there are a lot of apple trees here.  It was fun walking on the rocks along the river.  Of course my problem with hiking is that I am always looking at the rocks...I think I should have studied geology.  Look at this dark rock among all the red rocks.  How did nature mix the colors?

There were a few swimmers when we visited.  Al and I had sweatshirt jackets on and they were swimming!!!

The weather got a littler cooler again and we had some cloudy weather, not much for rain.  But we still had time to take a drove on side roads in the Sedona area and of course took some time to hike in the red dirt.  Al is overloading his camera with about 200 pictures per day!  ...if not more....It is pretty here.  The sun is shining most every day, but even a cloudy day gives you some great photo opps.

 We will be in Prescott Valley for the next two weeks.  Our eyes are set on some hiking areas in Sedona and maybe a few places to the East and North.  

Get ready for more pictures of those red rocks.  Like the tea cup....rams head....the bell....I can't think of all the names!  Plus we have to walk through a few of them there tourist shopping areas!  You never know what we will find. 

Might be a couple of lizards having an all out fight....Not sure who won...





Or maybe just relax along a lake and watch the ducks...Quack!!!

Lake Havasu Pyrotechnic show..Kingman..Oatman..Chloride...
From Congress AZ we next headed back to Lake Havasu.  We stopped overnight at a RV park on the way at Hope, enjoyed the cactus gardens and scenery here.

Had a chuckle at their sign as we left the town of Hope.  It's like they know!

Every year Lake Havasu has a huge pyrotechnic show that last 3 nights.  We had been to this even two years ago and just had to come back.  There is at least 3 hours of constant fireworks set to music.  Sometimes the fireworks are so intense you just hold your breath.  Lake Havasu is a pretty town located along the Colorado River at the border of Arizona and California. 

Here we caught up with Doug and Kay.
Next we headed to the Kingman AZ area and are staying at a little RV park in Golden Valley just outside of Kingman.  Kingman became famous during the days of Route 66.  We had never been here before so thought we would explore while waiting for the weather to get a bit warmer...alas a cold front has kept the whole state at lower than normal temperatures.  It had been warmer than normal all winter...oh well!  There are a couple of old mining towns here that are fun to explore.  Chloride is a short distance from us.  The residents here have collected junk from days past and are decorating their yards with the upcycled junk. 

Had lots of fun driving up and down the old dirt streets. 

This is a fishing pole....a telephone pole with metal fish made from old implement parts and metal on it....get it....

On a short drive up into the mountain there are murals painted on the huge boulders.  



Another ghost town in the area is Oatman.  While the residents here are not as artsy decorating their yards they do have a daily gunfight, little tourist shops, and of course a resident burro herd! 

The amazing thing to me about Arizona is how fast the terrain and scenery can change.  We drove up the mountain to the Hualapai County Park. 

Just that fast we are in the ponderosa pine trees again.  Up here we found a herd of female elk with last years offspring.  No Bulls.  They are not tame or fenced in but they are definitely used to people. 

As we were driving around Al saw a SQUIRREL! 

Laughlin NV is about 30 minutes from us.  Laughlin is on one side of the river and Bullhead City AZ is on the other side.  Mostly a gambling area...and no we did not gamble...but we did check out some parks and found a trail that led to some petroglyphs.  Nice walk and just a little bit warmer here...about 65. 

Doug and Kay left Kingman last week end and by the time of this posting they should be back up in MN.  It should be warming up this week, last week was rainy and in the 50's.  There are a few more places around here to explore....like Hoover Dam before we leave.  We plan to be in the Prescott and Sedona area in about 10 days.  They have been getting some snow up there, not much but a bit colder there.  Hopefully this cold system works its way out of Arizona as we plan to be up there for at least 3 weeks.  65 and sunny is very welcome!