Yesterday we left the Grand Canyon Camper Village and drove on down to Flagstaff to Black Bart's RV Park. We did some driving around the historic district of Flagstaff, then came back to the motorhome.
Today we went out exploring. There are some ruins north of the city, so we headed up that way. Less than 800 years ago, the 
Wupatki pueblo was the largest around. There remains foundations and walls of several buildings, one inside a box canyon. They were built near cracks in the earth where water would run during the rainy season. 
The main pueblo had a community meeting area and a ball court. The sites were quite extensive and evidence of a highly organized community.We continued along the road and stopped off at an overlook where we were treated to a beautiful vista of the painted desert. This is an area that has desert, mountains, craters, lava flows and more. There are so many different landscapes. . . everywhere you turn the ground looks different. We continued on down the road to Sunset Volcano Crater.
This volcano erupted almost 1000 years ago. It created lava flows that are still very much a part of the landscape and
showered the land with cinders which seem to be the main covering of the ground. The cinders are hundreds of feet deep and nothing except a few plants and trees grow in it. I think someone needs to scoop up all that stuff and spread it wherever you don't want any vegetation to grow. It would work better than weed killer. The lava flows were most impressive.
They are huge fields of lava rock, once molten and flowing down the mountain. There they have remained for 1000 years undisturbed. They look to be very deep, very rugged and massive. Quite interesting.We got back to the motorhome and relaxed a little. We fed Neal, then headed over to the Beaver Street Brewery where we met John, our son-in-law's brother. He is a graduate student at
Northern Arizona University. He has lived in Flagstaff for 10 years. We enjoyed visiting with him and sharing a meal.Tomorrow we hopefully be out of cold weather. The weather during the day here at Flagstaff has been great, but it has gotten down to freezing at night. We will be driving to Camp Verde tomorrow for a couple nights before heading down to Phoenix. We are in S L O W mode, just moving along and exploring as we go.
Till next time. . .
Dale
1 comment:
We explored that area last fall and found it very interesting. We didn't have quite enough time to see all the ruins at Wupatki, so will go back sometime. We still need to see a lot of things around Flagstaff.
Sounds like you are having a good time.
JanC
Post a Comment