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!!!