Nice town, Flagstaff…I spent some time driving around town in my rental car and visited a few places here and there. Couldn’t get too interested in the touristy thing since I was worried about my RV and whether or not the shop was going to try to claim it was something I’d done to the rig that caused it to fail again. Another week passed as NAD worked on it. I’d go over and visit now and again and volunteer my computer expertize but there wasn’t much they needed along those lines. (Lots of pictures follow…)
Anyway, the day finally came when my RV was again fixed. May 1st or 2nd. I had decided to just stick around Flagstaff and make a few runs out around town. Just in case. I’d done some internet searching and knew that the Walnut Canyon National Monument was just outside of town around 12 miles East or so, so I planned on heading there as soon as I got the rig back. The shop sent one of the techs over to my motel to get me and when I got to the shop, Scott gave me a look at the work they’d done including showing me the absolutely filthy air filter that he indicated is what caused the new piston to burn up. My brother is a trained mechanic and when he looked at the pictures I’d taken, insisted that it wasn’t the air filter. He thinks they accidentally used the wrong size valves so they weren’t closing (or was it opening?) correctly which coupled with a plugged air filter caused the cylinder to overheat. Scott didn’t try to charge me anything more for the rework. The shop took it on the chin. Must have cost them a couple thousand.
So I headed east to the Walnut Canyon NM rather tentatively, trying to baby the engine. Seemed to run pretty well. Sounded OK. Temps and pressures OK. Got to the NP around 12:30. What a place. Native Americans had occupied these cliffs for 125 years, abandoning the area in the 1450’s. But I’m getting ahead on this tour. Here’s some pictures of the place, starting at the rim:
Walnut Creek NP.
There the rig is, parked off in the distance.
Looking at these pictures I’m reminded how terrific the weather was in Flagstaff. Nice sunny and warm days, coolish nights.
The visitors center.
I liked the way they set this up. We (tourists) are up on the canyon rim and the setup kind of hides the canyon so you are encouraged to go into the building. There you can peruse the exhibits, and then head downstairs to begin the tour. The path immediately gives you a spectacular view of the canyon as it drops along the canyon wall switching back an forth as you descend.
The canyon and beyond.
Hard to tell anyone lived here at this point in the tour.
First look at a cliff dwelling.
This could use a video of the area but I didn’t think of it at the time. The trail leads you across the canyon on a bridge to a sort of island of rock. Then the trail winds around the island where you pass many cliff dwellings. From the trail you can see the other side of the canyon and all the cliff dwellings on the opposite walls. Some of them are still being investigated by archeologists so they are off limits. Cool place to live. Seems as though the Indians had been building dwellings here for over a hundred years. The place reminded me of a popular section of any present day town that starts out with a few dwellings, has a boom, then fades into obscurity over the years and eventually falls into disrepair. There were a few sections on the opposite cliff faces that seemed to be the upscale homes of the well-to-do. On the level below the nice looking buildings were these trashy places. Poorly built (compared to the dwellings above them), drafty looking using whatever rocks the (possibly) lazy owners had scrounged up to at least make an attempt at enclosing a cave opening.
Some remote dwellings off in the distance.
The mesa island.
In the picture above you can see the trail around the mesa. There’s an improved path that is the original trail the Indians used that winds all the way around the mesa and returns via the path there on the left of the picture.
Heading around the mesa.
Those dwellings shown above are off limits. Of course the NM trails don’t lead there anyway. They are across the canyon from where the improved trail is.
First cliff dwelling.
One of the few ‘large’ dwellings.
The people who lived here had made improvements many times…showing a long continuous habitation.
The walls may have gone to the ceiling at one time.
Back when these places were inhabited, the weather in the area was much like it is today. Lot’s of sunshine, occasional snow. Plenty of fresh water. As long as you can keep warm, the winters wouldn’t be all that hard, except you’d have to survive on wildlife and stores of grains gathered in the summer and fall. Many of these caves had plants that could be exploited for food, fuel or fibers much of the year.
Off in the distance…the fancy homes.
The dwellings above were across the canyon so I couldn’t visit them. They did look a little nicer, but they too had been a popular artifact hunters destination in the 1880’s and on into the 1920’s. Most of the significant artifacts left by the Indians were, or are, in peoples homes, then eventually tossed in the trash. Dammit.
That’s the National Monument building up on the top of the canyon.
Fancy house.
‘Course the people who lived here averaged around 5’ 4″ so, short doorways were the norm. Where you see them. Even they would have had to stoop, but that was because they were trying to keep much of the heat inside.
Some of these dwelling had some fine masonry done.
Along the path.
Nearly all of the dwellings were on the south side of the mesa. To take advantage of the winter sun and the summer shade. That is perceived to be the areas first building epoch. Later, as the tribe grew to a few hundred, they started building on canyon walls opposite the mesa island. By the way, to get water when it wasn’t raining enough, they had to take this harrowing trail down the canyon wall to the river below and lug it back up. The archeologists tell us that children and women did that chore and that it was a breeze for them but while looking at the trail I thought to myself that it wouldn’t be all that fun trying to lug water up the steep, rocky path, jumping here and there to available outcrops of rocks. Water weighs 8 lbs per gallon, humans need around 8 glasses of water per day. Especially when it’s hot. There are 16 glasses/gallon. So one gallon is only enough, on average, for two people. Imagine how many trips down to the river they’d have to take for a couple hundred people on a hot summer day! And the river is 100 feet below. Seems as though they’d have to make 250 trips per day, carrying 2,000 lbs of water. Sure, they had cisterns that they could fill during rain storms but during the hot summer months, it must have really been a chore keeping enough water available. They did have the luxury of having the occasional thunder & rain storm during the summer months.
Then there was food needed by all those people. Sure they had their little plants cultivated on the cliff edge, but mostly they foraged. Wouldn’t be much time for frivolity in this community. You’d spend nearly all day trying to find food, lugging water, then trying to make trade goods in the evenings. Then you’d need to repair, or help with your neighbors dwellings, caching away food for the winter, arguing with the local bullies, caring for the young. Whew. What a life. I don’t romanticize it to often. Must have been really hard as the community grew and there became too many people after too few resources. Big game was available, but it would only take a few years for it to become a week long hunting trip as the local game diminished. Tough life. They did cultivate crops on the top of the mesa, but that was also an exciting climb. Wasn’t much space up there for crops either. Down by the river was another area they could cultivate. Roots, shoots, wild rice, cactus, etc.
During the winter it couldn’t have been anything but harrowing. Few plants, snow on the ground, freezing rains, game that had learned to avoid humans, and the cold. But, the people lived here for 125 years so they survived, somehow. At least with the rains they probably didn’t have to make as many trips down to the river to collect water. But there were many plants they used from down there, even in the winter, so they still had to make that harrowing climb down and back up. I wonder if, since the bottom of canyons are generally warmer then up top, that they didn’t sometimes move down to the edge of the river and spend a month or two down there? At least until the spring thaw came and the river swelled, or spring rains may have caused a rapid melt and flash floods became a concern. Dunno.
The only floor to ceiling wall that remains.
Although this shows a floor to ceiling wall, many of the dwellings had only partial walls. Those dwellings that only had half walls probably used skins to block the wind during the winter, but they were ready for summer. Just remove the skins and you’ve got nice cool air circulating through your house. Or perhaps those were the folks that moved down to the canyon floor for the winter or to other, lower homes.
Inside the house.
Note the blackening of the walls and ceiling caused by soot from fires. This particular dwelling was the most compete, with several rooms. Think it was probably a chiefs house.
This place had a great south facing location. And a terrific view.
Across the canyon…even more dwellings.
Hard to see in the above picture but see that level with the buff colored rocks. You could see from where I was standing that there were some walls build under some of those stones that seemed to be hanging on by a tread. Didn’t look like a very popular place for the locals.
Here’s a better view.
Right there in the middle of the above picture is a cliff dwelling. Then up above it on the next level to the right a bit is another dwelling.
Even more off to the east.
A look back at the ‘Island Mesa’ from the trail up to the NM building.
It’s hard to see from the pictures but the island is really a peninsula. The trail is improved with a path with rails in many places and all so it isn’t scary, if you have young ones. The river comes from the bottom left, courses around the island, and comes back to the right bottom of the above picture. The trail is .9 miles long so doesn’t take too long to traverse. I spent 3 hours just going that one mile or so. Lots to see, tremendous views. After that trip, there is another trail up on the rim. That gives you some differing views of the rivers course around the island. Then, way off to the east are even more cliff dwellings. Off limits to us tourists though.
Back up on the rim.
The Indians did most of their hunting up here, and there is actually a rock shelter built here, I believe before the cliff dwellings were built.
Rock shelter.
Well, that is it for the Walnut Creek NM tour. If you’re in that area, you should make this a destination. Very interesting. I wouldn’t come here in August…too hot. It was perfect weather in early May.
After that nice tour, I headed back to Flagstaff and got an RV space at Black Barts again. Turned out that the WiFi sucked, even though I had 5 bars. It’s just there were by this time of the season, sooo many people all trying to get on-line and their equipment was under spec’ed that it was misery trying to get a fast connection.
See you next time.