Red Rock Country

later start today! Crissi, Mike, Riley and I meet up with Kathy and Janice close to 10.30am. as the temperature had dropped and the forecast predicted snow we packed blankets, hotties, jackets , hats, scarves etc!

First stop was to be Montezuma castle, the drive up was amazing, the scenery changed from  lots of Saguaro to more Prickly Pear and Jumping Jack cacti, and trees. the dessert is very pretty, and I a,m amazed at how flat it is! On the way we went past a mini stack ( freeways crossing), it was very impressive!

Montezuma Castle is a National Monument and is in the Verde Valley.  It was the dwelling place of the Singagua, and was abandoned in the early 1400s. This dwelling was built into the cliff face, it had 5 levels and over 20 rooms, apparently the Singagua people used ladders to reach it and also inside as some rooms were multi level. They used the cliff face as it already provided 3 walls and a roof! Apparently it was cool in summer and warm in winter. In many places you could see where the Singagua had built up outside walls with bricks.  They were farmers and used the flat ground for their crops. It was mind boggling to think how they could have built such a structure and also built a rock wall stopbank by the river using their hands and basic tools.  Some of the trees were cottonwoods trees, their trunks were very smooth and the bark looked like camouflage, greys and greens, they looked stunning, with no leaves and against the cliffs.  We meet David, our first park ranger, compete with the ranger hat!

By this time it was after 2 pm so we set off for Jerome. They call Jerome a ghost town, it was originally a mining town and was built into the hill, the houses were built close together and many were 3 stories high, and it looked like 1 room wide. We have lunch in the Haunted Hamburger, and had a quick poke around in the very cute shops.

Mike and Riley headed back to Gilbert and we headed off to Sedona. As we got closer the views of the red rocks were spectacular.

short post tonight, we are pretty tired, the evening ended with Kathy skyping Lils and Rubie and Tony, I managed to Skype with Kerry, Laura, Alex, Bethay and Audrey.  :-) Happy anniversary Kerry from USof A! Crissi's wedding anniversary was when she was in NZ, probably because many teachers get married n the holidays!

It's hard to believe that this time next week we will be getting back on the plane back to NZ!