Tuesday's Adventures: We headed for Casa Grande National Historic Monument. It's located in the flat plain of central Arizona in between the Gila and Santa Cruz rivers, close to Coolidge and about 15 miles from the town of Casa Grande. The structure was once part of a collection of settlements scattered along the Gila River and linked by a network of irrigation canals. During spring, the monument is sometimes the hottest place in the whole USA, and even in winter, daytime temperatures can reach 80°F. These are the well-preserved ruins of an ancient Hohokam farming community. The most striking ruins are of the Great House. (A modern shelter was built over the ruins to protect them.) They date from around 1350, and are still used by Native Americans today for ceremonial and religious events. It's one of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America. Its purpose remains as much a mystery as the people who built it. Archeologists have discovered evidence of wide-scale irrigation farming and trade which lasted over a thousand years and ended about 1450. No one knows what they called themselves, but they're now remembered as the "Hohokam," an O'odham (modern tribe) word meaning "Those Who Are Gone."
It is believed that the Casa Grande was a kind of astronomical observatory. The four walls face the points of the compass, and some of the windows are aligned to the positions of the sun and moon at specific times.These were some impressive ruins. These ancient people were excellent builders. The walls were very thick. Many of the wooden beams were still intact. There were several stories with numerous interior rooms. All in all, it must have been a fairly good life!
Wednesday's Adventures: We headed out early Wednesday morning toward the little town of Camp Verde, Arizona. Our first stop was a tour of Ford Verde State Historic Park. Fort Verde was important in the Indian Wars of the 1870's and 1880's. Arizona was still a territory at this time. Three of the five original buildings still stand. We toured the commanding officers' quarters, the married officers' quarters, the bachelor officers' quarters and the surgeon's quarters. Although they seemed pretty primitive, it was apparently a desirable assignment at the time.From Fort Verde, we headed to Montezuma's Castle. This is one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America. It had 20 rooms in several stories, nestled high in a limestone. The dwellings are over 1,000 years old, and demonstrate that these ancient people were brilliant survivors in an unforgiving desert landscape. I tried something new and made a short video to overview the ruins. I hope it works--it may take a few minutes for the video to load. Click on the arrow to start.
The entrance traverses a flat scrubland down into a valley formed by Beaver Creek - a small stream that was a reliable source of water all year round and thus a good locality for the Sinagua people to establish a home. It was quite a relief to escape the desert heat and dryness. The walk to the ruins was shaded by Arizona sycamore trees. Since 1951, visitors have not been permitted to climb up to the ruins due to their unstable condition, but there were very informative signs and a park ranger to answer questions. Here's another short video of Beaver Creek as it looks today.
We skipped a stop at Montezuma's Well, a rare desert spring, in favor of taking in Tuzigoot ruins (which is Apache for crooked river). Where Montezuma's Castle was a cliff dwelling, Tuzigoot was built on a mountain ridge. Like the people who lived at Montezuma's Castle (which is a misnomer, by the way--Montezuma lived in Mexico, not Arizona), the Tuzigoot belong to a pueblo culture known as the Sinagua. The pueblo consisted of 110 rooms in two- and three-story structures. The first buildings were built around A.D. 1000. The Sinagua were agriculturalists with trade connections that spanned hundreds of miles. The people left the area around 1400.There was one final adventure after this very full day. We had a flat tire! Fortunately, we were not pulling the RV, and we were right next to a big parking lot where it was safe to change to the spare. Unfortunately, we had to drive 45 miles (and we were already 50 miles from our campground) to Flagstaff to get the tire changed. Discount Tires in Flagstaff replaced the tire at no cost (thanks to our road hazard insurance). We at dinner at a Chinese restaurant and drove almost 2 hours to get back to camp. Exhausting, but it would have been a lot worse if we'd had the trailer behind us!
Thursday's Adventure: We slept in in Thursday after the strenuous previous day. We decided we didn't feel like making the 3-hour drive to see the Grand Canyon--we'll catch it on the way back East next Spring. Instead, we decided to go panning for gold. We bought a pan ($12), parked in a nearby bait and tackle shop, and headed off to try our luck in the nearby Agua Fria River (which is dry most of the year, including now). No luck at all!
Someone told us we might have better luck in Prescott, so we drove about 35 miles north to Lynx Lake Recreation Area. This place was worth a visit just for the cool shade and green trees. We hiked down the Lynx Creek trail to the creek, which had a few pools of water remaining. We only found two tiny flakes of gold, but it was a lovely day.
Whew--I told you this was going to be a long blog! Hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as we enjoyed doing it.
We head out tomorrow for the final stretch to California. We plan to be at Lake Piru by Sunday afternoon. We spoke with the ranger there this morning, and the fire stopped on the other side of the lake from the campground. We're looking forward to settling down for the winter--having fun every day can be tiring! Talk to you again soon!
2 comments:
Very interesting. In the first two photos, is the second shot (of the doorway) a closeup of the doorway in the first photo? The guy near the doorway looks so small. That monument must be huge.
Joyce, so much is so very brown, brown, brown. The photo where Wiley is walking with the rather brilliant blue pan -- it just looks so dry and brown with very little green. I wonder if it is always like that or if the time of year has something to do with it.
Thought that was the saddest little creek - nice photo but my goodness. Is that little bit of water where you panned for gold?
I didn't know you could even do videos like that. On both videos, it appeared as if the heat was literally rising up from the whole picture. I wonder if it truly was that hot that you captured the heat rising. Interesting.
John perked up when I got to the eating at a Chinese Restaurant part. Now he thinks we should go to Super Buffet this evening!
Montezuma's Castle was neat. Also the Apache ruins.
I'm sorry you won't be doing the Grand Canyon this time. After I told you about the train from Williams to the Canyon, I looked it up. The train cost was outrageous so I guess when we head out West, we won't be taking that train either!
Have a safe journey to Piru!
Yes, the second photo is a closeup of the door seen in the first photo. The ruins were 3-4 stories tall. I believe they said up to 35 families may have lived there (I'd have to check--all the ruins are beginning to run together).
I'm really tired of the brown, dry, desolate landscape. I'm sure hoping that our home in California is going to be less like a desert. I'm going to do another post tonight (I hope), but it's just more desert. Today we drove through the Colorado Desert and stopped at Joshua Tree National Park.
Almost all the creeks and rivers between Oklahoma and Arizona (and there were a number of them) were dry. Apparently they run very high in the spring and then dry up in the winter.
It was pretty hot during the day, but the temperature dropped 30-40 degress at night, and we slept under blankets (and the heat usually came on by morning). First thing in the A.M., you wanted a jacket, and by 10 A.M., you were putting on shorts!
We priced the train and decided that was outrageous, but the main reason we didn't go this time was that it would have been 3 hours each way, which wouldn't have given us any time to spend at the canyon. We plan to visit it on the trip back East this spring.
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