After we headed out of the Grand Canyon (March 27), our primary next goal was the Petrified Forest National Park, but we took the opportunity to stop in a couple of locations along the way – Wupatki National Monument and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. The first is the site of a large pueblo, and the latter is, well, a crater. Both were quite impressive, well worth a stop.
Standing on the sign.
Wupatki NM
After driving through the outskirts of this monument, and seeing some small remnants of buildings on the surrounding low hills, we arrived at the visitor center by the main site. This national monument is the ruins of an old pueblo, around 800 years old. It was a multi room structure, with other subsidiary buildings, and there is enough left to make it pretty fascinating. There is a short nature trail that winds through it, with some interpretive signs that I ended up reading out loud for everybody. Not sure how that happened. There is also a “blow hole” where air comes out of the ground, and the name made us all giggle, since we are, of course, all twelve. It was set against a backdrop of a black slope, from volcanic sand, which made the red of the pueblo stand out even more brightly.
The main pueblo building
Looking closer, seeing many of the rooms, and the bright color of the stone.
Looking at the construction of this building, one of the very few structures in the surrounding barren land, really brought home how this had been the center of the life around there. It was a pretty strong feeling.
The monument site also had some neat pictures of when a ranger had actually *lived* in it with his wife for a while, the kind of practice they no longer really promulgate. I guess that is a pretty good way to really know the site you are working at though.
The aforementioned “blowhole”.
I’m not sure what gait Dave is employing there.
Sunset Crater NM
We then continued along that particular stretch of road and came to the next monument we were heading for. You could quite clearly see the volcano obviously from a good bit down the road. We parked, and headed to the loop trail through the lava bed. The lava is pretty crazy! All broken and pretty painful looking. It was a nice walk though, with some useful interpretive signs, perhaps most amusingly the ones about the lava tubes.
You can, in fact, see where the rest of the mountain would have been.
Really. None. No joke.
And don’t even try to walk on that stuff.
