We rose early today as we planned to visit Montezuma’s castle and ancient cliff dwelling south of Sedona. The road takes us through a scenic drive amongst the red rock down to a dirt track (we seem to be finding a lot of those at the moment) where we come across another National Monument called Montezuma’s Well. This is a sinkhole, a collapsed underground limestone cavern filled with water. More than a million gallons of water a day flow continuously, providing a lush, verdant oasis in the midst of surrounding desert grassland. Montezuma's Well is 368 feet across and 55 feet deep. There is a short trail that takes you down to the well floor and we are amazed by the ancient dwellings on the sidewalls and along the edge of the well. Climbing back up to the top of the well rim we follow another trail to where the spring water from the well cuts through the limestone and form a stream. This stream was diverted by the ancient locals to act as irrigation to the fields where they grew their crops. Although this was not a planned trip we had a really enjoyable time here.
From Montezuma’s Well we go further south to the country’s first National Monument. Montezuma’s Castle. This 5 storey cliff dwelling was built by the Sinaquas, an Ancient Indian Tribe about 700 years ago, but was later abandoned in 1400. Interestingly, the name Montezuma Castle was a mistaken name. Early settlers who discovered the cliff dwelling ruins erroneously connected them to the Aztec emperor Montezuma, but in-fact the Sinaqua ruins had been abandoned a hundred years before Montezuma was even born. The dwellings weren’t a castle at all, but a multi-family “prehistoric high rise apartment complex”. It took ladders to climb to Montezuma Castle and as the Sinaqua reached each level, the ladders made their way to the cliff community making it difficult for enemy tribes to penetrate the natural defence of straight-vertical barriers. This is another chance for Jack and Emily to do a field trip, so we get them to do the Junior Ranger programme in the visitors centre. It is only a short walk to the ruins from the visitor’s centre and it is such a glorious day. There are a couple concerning signs on the trail – one warns of rattle snakes, the second somewhat more curious saying not to approach the squirrels as they may carry the bubonic plague infection. Black Death in the National Parks!( Karen doesn't believe this could happen in such a litigeous society!We expect to hear of the mysterious disappearance of all the park's squirrels soon!)The trail follows the line of Beaver Creek, which was the life line to the Sinaqua Indians, but today it is just a glorious backdrop, sparkling in the early afternoon sun. We reach the ruins which are quite spectacular, particularly when we reflect that these people did not have metal tools to help in the construction of these dwellings.
Unfortunately we cannot hang around too long as we have to get back to Sedona to go on a Jeep tour in the back country. We decided to take a 4 pm tour as the late afternoon sun is probably the best time to see the red rocks. There are quite a few different Jeep tours operating out of Sedona but we chose the Pink Jeep tours. The name of the tour is evident when you see the colour of their Jeeps – bright pink. Before of our tour begins we return to the wonderful ice cream store, The Black Cow Café, which we had discovered the day before. The theory was we would need the rush of sugar before taking our tour. We had seen these Jeep Tours in the TV series ”Little People, Big World” a series about the Roloff Family – the mother, father and one of their sons have dwarfism. It looked great fun. Pink Jeep offer several tours, the one we selected was the called Broken Arrow and is the high adrenalin tour. We meet up with our driver David and three other people who would be sharing our Jeep. These men had driven up from Phoenix where they had been attending a trade show on the software gaming industry – Jack and Emily’s eyes lit up at this!!!
The tour starts on the paved streets of Sedona but we soon detour off towards the red cliffs that overlook the city. These Jeeps have been modified to deal with the rough terrain on the off road trails through these hills. We hit some amazing bumps in the road including some large rocks, which the Jeep handles with comparative ease. Karen looks a little nervous of the trail – and is concerned about the effect of the bumps and lumps on her back. The trail takes us high above the valley and we get the chance to have a few photo stops along the way. Our driver David is a professional photographer so for a change we 
get a chance to all be on the photographs. The final leg of the tour takes us down a set of rocks and at some point we are tilted to an angle of about 70 degrees, this is followed by going down a steep, stepped hill (reminiscent of the mini coopers going down the steps in the film “The Italian Job”). Whilst Karen is a bit freaked out by this Jack and Emily are having a whale of a time and in fact complain to David that this tour is not extreme enough. Fortunately he did not take up the challenge. 2 hours shoot past and all too soon we are back in Sedona.The adrenalin rush had fuelled our appetite so we crossed main street in Sedona to a restaurant called the Cowboy Club, where we chose the appetizer sampler. This included buffalo brochette, fried cactus and rattlesnake brochette. Emily tried the cactus but was not keen on trying the rattlesnake or buffalo, but the rest of us gave it a go. In fact they all tasted great, the rattlesnake which we were most suspicious of actually tasted of chicken. To wash this down the grown-up Hoblets supped a large glass of the local micro-breweries dark ale.
Truly a great day!
No comments:
Post a Comment