Southwest Vacation - Day 4

After a rather restless night in Tucson, we headed north to see the Red Rocks of Sedona.

I must say, one of our prettiest drives was from Phoenix to Sedona.

As you can see by the last couple of shots...the sky is very ominous looking.  A few hours after we rolled through Phoenix, we learned they had what some called the Storm of the Century.  There were wind gusts of 80 - 90 mph, torrential downpours, hail the size of golf balls and tennis balls and water running a foot deep across the roads with visibility at about 100 yards.   Thank goodness we were up and at'em that morning and rolled through early.

Our first road side stop of the day was Montezuma Castle.

Southern Sinagua farmers began building this five-story, 20-room dwelling early in the 1100s CE (Common Era).  It stands in cliff recess 100 feet above the valley.  Early settlers marveled at the structure and assumed that it was Aztec in origin, hence the name Montezuma Castle.  The structure is built from limestone and made mud from nearby Beaver Creek.


A diorama of the interior of the castle.

Montezuma Castle consists of 20 rooms covering five distinct levels. The primary entrance is through a doorway on level 2, with access to other levels through interior wooden ladders which extend through openings in the ceiling.

A girl and her castle...

Eleven miles down the road is Montezuma Well.

Montezuma Well is a natural limestone funnel shaped sinkhole 368 feet wide, 55 feet deep and maintains an even temperature of 76 degrees year round. 

Cliff dwellings 70 feet above the water's surface surround the hole.

Mark took the trail to the bottom of the well where he saw 800 year old "cave homes"

 Over 1.5 million gallons of water flow into the Well every day, a rate that has not fluctuated measurably despite recent droughts throughout the state of Arizona. This water enters a "swallet" near the end of the trail into the Well and flows through over 150 feet of limestone before re-emerging from the outlet into an irrigation ditch on the other side. Sections of this ditch date back over 1,000 years.



Mark - always where he's NOT supposed to be!


It was at Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well that we were introduced to the beautiful Arizona Sycamore tree. These bark on these trees is white with brownish-gray splotches.  Very smooth trunk and they normally grow to be 50-65 feet.  Some have grown as tall as 80 feet.

It had been sprinkling off and on while we were at the well, but once we started on the trial back to the car, it started pouring!  And remained stormy for the rest of the day.

We headed up to Sedona to see the Red Rock formations.  Our first stop was lunch at Maria's Mexican Cantina.  Yes we ate a lot of Mexican food on our trip (we WERE in the southwest!)...we had a good time comparing salsa & cheese dip to what we get at home. 

We didn't get to see Sedona at its best due to the weather, but we gave it our best.  Below are some of the formations we did see. 

 

My husband says my cute little hat makes me look like a grandma!



Check out those storm clouds...Yikes!



This is our GPS and shows our route from Sedona to Flagstaff.  Nerve wracking to say the least!  It was a very narrow two lane road that followed the edge of the mountain.  To top it off, about 1/2 way through our gas light came on...there are NO gas stations on this route.  It was raining so hard we couldn't see, it was dark and we were really nervous we were going to run out of gas and have to get out in the storm and walk to get gas.  So a lot of praying ensued and the good Lord took care of us and got us to the gas station before we ran out. 

After we filled up, we headed to the village outside of Grand Canyon National Park.  We did have a reservation that night because rooms aren't always available.  It was the most expensive and probably the worse room we stayed in the entire trip.  After we unloaded we went to the Sports Grill to grab a bite and then went back to the room and went to bed.  It seems the theme of the trip was once we finally made it to our hotel, we were so tired we went straight to bed.