Today was spent in the Flagstaff area visiting three National Monuments. We were the first on the trail at Walnut Canyon this morning. This mile loop circles the cliffs of Walnut Canyon about 200' down from the Mesa and let's you see the cliff dwellings which were inhabited by the locals about 1100AD. A nice cool walk this morning but then the sun warmed up and a bus load of Japanese desended on the place.
After a brief stop at our Moose for lunch, we continued on to Sunset Crater Volcano NM to climb a 300' cinder cone and take a stroll through the lava flow. This area is well covered by Ponderosa pine so it was nice to sit in the shade and just enjoy the day. The NPS gate attendent was a cute youngster from Ft. Wayne.
The adjacent park to this is Wupatki NM. It is about 500 to 1,000' lower elavation and the day was growing later so the temperature had climbed to 96F. The cool mountain breeze still kept the conditions nice so we did the short hikes to Wukoki Pueblo and Citadel Pueblo. These are some pretty neat dwellings and the area is green due to the rains this summer. It was quite easy to see how this area could have potentially been inhabited by large groups of natives if just a little more water was present.
By five o'clock it was time to return to the Moose for Margaritas and a lawn chair siesta.
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