Walnut Canyon National Monument -- VERY COOL!

On Monday (9/24) we went to Meteor Crater (located 35 miles east of Flagstaff). I must admit that I wasn't too eager to spend $16/person to see a hole in the ground, but Mark wanted to see it (and he got a dollar off for being 60 - senior discount:) We watched a 10 minute video and took a walking tour along the crater's rim led by a guide who is studying geology in college and obviously loves what he is doing:)

Guided tour of the crater rim.

That's Mark on the observation platform.

A small piece of the meteorite

From there we drove to Walnut Canyon National Monument and hiked the foot trail partway down into the canyon which passes by, or takes you THROUGH, the ruins of about 25 cliff dwelling rooms. There are sheer drops and a 185-foot climb up 240 steep steps back to the canyon rim. It was VERY COOL and well worth the climb. It wasn't too hot and there was a nice breeze. Its difficult to tell from the pictures, but the canyon is very deep and there are many tiers of narrow ledges lining the vertical canyon walls. Along these ledges ancient Hopi and Zuni clans built homes in shallow caves sheltered by overhanging cliffs and used the narrow ledges to travel around the canyon between the settlements. We were amazed how these people could live and build homes perched on the walls of the canyon, far beneath the rim and even farther to the canyon floor where they would have had to trek for water, but there was obviously a thriving community here based on the number of settlements.

Across the canyon- See the ruins under the ledge?

After leaving Walnut Canyon we were going to stop at Wupatki National Monument and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, but since we have been to similar spots already, we decided to skip them and go straight to The Grand Canyon.

 

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