When I wrote about City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico I identified this plant as an agave. It’s not. I had forgotten about seeing these at Big Bend National Park a couple of years ago. This is a sotol. I corrected my blog, but most of you are unlikely to see the corrected version. Being a plant person and someone who likes to have their facts straight, I decided to do a short blog to correct this. There are three groups of desert plants that have a globe of long stiff leaves and an inflorescence on a tall stalk. In general sotol leaves are narrower than the other two. But the easiest way to identify them is that they have a long column of flowers coming directly from the stalk, so when the flowers die you’re left with a dry inflorescence that looks like a bottle brush.
This is an agave. The inflorescence on an agave is branched, so it looks like a tree. This species may be what we call a century plant because it looks like the plant died once it bloomed. The leaves on an agave are also somewhat thicker.
Sometimes very thick.
The third one is this, yucca. The inflorescence can resemble agave, but if you look closely at the base you can see that yuccas grow tall. Their leaves form a globe on the top of the stem which is clad in downturned dead leaves. When they’re young the stem is not noticeable and they can be confused with agaves. But they get quite tall, and then the difference is obvious.
Thank you, I feel better now. (I’ve been waiting to do this until I got decent pictures of each of them. I was hoping to find them all on our tour of Saguaro National Park because they all grow there, but alas, not where we were.)
I had read an on-line article about the best Native American ancestral sites in Arizona and Montezuma Castle was one of them. This is another National Monument and we visited it on Thursday.
These cliff dwellings are along Wet Beaver Creek, one of a handful of waterways that flow year round in Arizona.
The area had some huge old sycamores, I couldn’t get the whole tree in the picture.
To protect the main structure this is as close as you were allowed to approach.
I appreciated that they were also protecting the trees.
The “castle” wasn’t the only dwelling at the site, just the best preserved. These homes were built around the same time as Tuzigoot, and were also part of what is now called the Sinagua culture. Sinagua means without water, but the ruins we saw were all along valleys with water.
Since you could no longer go up into the “castle” the National Park Service created this scale model which is on display at the site. The people who lived here also moved on around 1400. The Hopi claim them as ancestors and say the migration had spiritual roots.
Not far from Montezuma Castle is Montezuma Well. I found this one of the most fascinating sites we visited. Like the castle, the well has nothing to do with Montezuma and was home to people of the Sinagua culture.
About 1.6 million gallons of water flow up through the bottom and out through a tunnel on the side each day. The water is almost constant in volume and temperature (about 74 degrees F). The water coming up into the well has been making its way from the surface of the Colorado Plateau for more than 10,000 years. It comes up with such force that divers cannot descend more than 55 feet, where they meet a false bottom of boiling sand. Researchers have been able to send instruments another 65 feet below that.
There is a trail that leads down inside the bowl…
where you could see the where the water disappears into the tunnel dissolved through the side of the caldron.
Right by that opening was a small dwelling.
There is also a larger structure up on the wall on the opposite side of the well.
One wonders if they drank the water and what effect it might have had. There are no fish or amphibians because the dissolved carbon dioxide levels are 80 times normal. Only five unique species live here, a diatom (a one-celled plant), an amphipod which eats the diatoms, and a water scorpion and fresh water leech which feed on the amphipods. There is also a tiny snail. Pondweeds grow on the edges and ducks visit. In addition to the high levels of dissolved carbon dioxide, there are high levels of arsenic in the water. Arsenic has shown up in bones of animals that lived here.
Another trail led down the outside of the bowl where there were more ruins.
This is the outlet of the tunnel.
The people who lived here diverted some of that water through very narrow but deep canals to their crops. What a mixed blessing this water was, life giving, but mildly poisonous.
The brochure we got at Montezuma Castle that had information on that site and on Montezuma Well had a map that showed another nearby site, The V Bar V Heritage Site, but had no information on it. Unlike Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well which are managed by the National Park Service (Department of the Interior), The V Bar V Heritage Site is managed by the National Forest Service (Department of Agriculture). We asked the docent about that one and she said it had petroglyphs, so we decided to go there the next day.
About all that’s left of the ranch is this beautiful chimney, built from local materials along with the ranch house in 1932.
A short walk down a manicured trail took you to a red rock wall with more than a thousand petroglyphs! Besides the number and excellent condition of these petroglyphs the site is unusual in the number of birds depicted. It will have a new name soon, The Crane Petroglyph and V Bar B Heritage Site. Then you’ll know from the name that this place is about petroglyphs.
The site is also unusual because all of the petroglyphs are of one style, called the Beaver Creek Style.
It also has a very elaborate panel with elements that are thought to be part of a solar calendar, marking the summer and winter solstices and the spring and fall equinoxes. There also may be figures indicating spring planting times.
This part of Arizona has proved to be beautiful and has a wealth of archeological sites. We have loved it.
Yesterday Bud suggested we rent an ATV in town. Vortex ATV Rentals set us up with a two-seater, a map and tablet with our route, a cooler, helmets and goggles and we were off.
We set out following the route. At first we were on a dirt road headed towards those distant cliffs.
We turned onto an OHV (off highway vehicle) Trail…
and drove into more rugged country.
We were back on a dirt road as we approached the cliffs. These are the famous red rocks of Sedona.
And they are beautiful.
After almost two hours we came to the site of the Honanki Cliff Dwellings.
There are a lot of people cooperating to preserve this space.
As we approached the ruins we walked through tall trees, so there was water here.
These ancient homes were built into the base of the red rock cliff,
they stretched along the cliff,
and were themselves made from the red rocks. Beautiful.
Not only were the dwellings stunning,
we loved seeing the pictographs.
I overheard a guide explaining some of these…
and wished we had a guide ourselves.
We left as per our route, on 9551, the Outlaw Trail.
We chose not to eat lunch at the ruins because there were too many people there. Whole truckloads, in fact.
We drove out until we got to a place where we could stop and eat on the upwind side of the dusty trail.
I tried to capture just how rough this trail was in spots.
You might be able to tell a bit from this far from professional video I took. Near the end I say, “Whoa, we hit something.” To which Bud replies, “Bottomed out.” And my phone kind of flies around.
We continued to drive through the beautiful country, down across this bit of a canyon,
until we got to the Power-line Trail. I think that was the most rugged.
We even had to open and close gates along the way. In one of the roughest sections, where the trail went down into a deep gulch and then back up again, we saw an SUV at the bottom. Bud backed away from the brink of the hill to allow him to come up. When he didn’t Bud drove down. It was a BMW and had been abandoned there. The bottom of the gulch wasn’t much longer than the car, his front and back bumpers were both nearly touching the ground. Sorry I didn’t get a picture, I was too busy holding on! It’s a mystery to me how he ever got it that far.
We figure we went about a hundred miles in all. It was a fun ride through some beautiful country and an unusual day for us.
About 15 minutes from our campsite is Tuzigoot National Monument.
This is the excavated ruins of a 119 room pueblo which we visited on Monday. It was built in stages, between about 1100 and 1300 CE.
It sits atop a hill…
with a view of the river plain around it and the distant mountains. Tuzigoot loosely means river bend. Of course we don’t know what the original inhabitants called it, but Apaches who worked on the excavation in the 1930’s named it that.
At the top of the structure some rooms were partially reconstructed. Today that wouldn’t be done because in carrying out the reconstruction some archeological information was no doubt lost.
It was interesting to see the building technique,
and it did give access to that view.
The small museum had some impressive pieces of pottery. The largest of these jars was probably close to three feet in diameter.
It was an enjoyable visit to a very interesting place.
This is our new campsite for the next week, we’re at Dead Horse Ranch State Park in Cottonwood, Arizona. As soon as we had the trailer set up Matey and I took off for our first park reconnaissance.
This park has a lot of little trails that meander all over. We started out on the Arroyo Nature Trail and in a few hundred feet came across this flume. The flume carries the water of the Hickey Ditch…
over the arroyo. You can see the flume in the background. The arroyo also has water in it. The Hickey Ditch has been carrying water diverted from the Verde River to irrigate nearby land since 1874.
Not much further down the trail we came to the river. I had to stop and take a video to capture the sound of the water. The last time I’d heard flowing water was in Menard, Texas, over a thousand miles ago. It sounded beautiful to me and made me realize how wonderful it would sound to folks traveling in the desert. It’s no wonder this valley has been settled and farmed for a thousand years.
And with water comes trees. In this case big cottonwoods, hence Cottonwood, Arizona.
We walked a bit further and came back to the ditch.
The area along the ditch was also treed, though these trees were smaller.
Away from the life giving water the trees are gone, the now familiar desert plants are all that can grow.
Yesterday we drove north about 30 miles to visit Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. This is the remains of a large settlement built about 700 years ago. It dates from around the same time as the cliff dwellings in the Salt River basin.
This protective roof was built over the main house in 1932, replacing one built in 1903. There are workers repairing some of the walls in the large compound surrounding the structure.
These structures were all built from caliche, a mixture of sand, clay and calcium carbonate that was quarried near the site. It dries nearly as hard as concrete.
To support such a tall structure (35 feet) the bottoms of the walls were four feet wide. There is no reinforcement in the walls, they gradually tapered by having the outside surface curve in. The horizontal striping is from each section of caliche that was allowed to dry before the next layer was added. Timbers and smaller material woven together made the floors, which were also covered with caliche.
I was surprised to learn that the society that built this great house also constructed miles of canals to use the water of the Gila River to support agriculture. Among the crops they grew was cotton, which likes hot weather but also takes a lot of water. Cotton is still grown here today.
No one knows why they abandoned this place in about 1450, but evidence suggests that floods alternating with droughts made maintenance of the canal system too difficult. The O’Odam people (and other current groups) claim these people as their ancestors and some think when the bad times came they went back to a simpler and more sustainable lifestyle closer to the river.
Today we went to view the desert by itself, at Saguaro (sa-wah-ro) National Park. I was thrilled to see this ocotillo with leaves at the visitors center.
I was impressed with the density of plants here.
The saguaros were numerous and huge. Bud is in there at the base of one of them.
We visited a picnic area with this lovely stone shelter built by the C.C.C. I am amazed by how many of the parks we visit still have trails and structures built by the C.C.C. And all of their construction used local materials and so fits beautifully into the landscape.
It was nice and cool inside with a great view. How well thought out!
Even this old restroom (no longer in use) is picture worthy.
The desert can be quite stunning. Those are fruits on the top of the barrel cacti. We were curious how the one on its side could still look healthy.
It seems it has a couple of main roots holding on, and on the left side you can see a bunch of fibrous roots that are still attached. Hang in there baby!
We walked up an abandoned road where Matey was allowed to go and came as far as this vista.
Along the way we saw these small saguaros. Saguaro are more fragile when they are young. A study done in this park found that there were too few saguaro younger than fifteen years, so I was happy to spot these babies. Actually, these are probably somewhere around 10 years old, as these giants only grow an inch or so for their first six to eight years. They reach full height (40 to 50 feet) at age 150!
Although it was sad to see, I thought this saguaro dying in a mesquite tree made an interesting tableau.
On the way back from the park we stopped for a few holes of desert disc golf.
Even there we saw how hard organisms work to stay alive in the desert. Bud spotted this extensive root system unearthed in this freshly eroded gully, all attached to the very tiny plants on the surface.
We ended our day and our stay at Picacho Peak State Park with a meal Bud made from his find in Texas, Jamaican Curried Goat. With four kinds of peppers it was plenty hot, but it was good and the meat was tender and mild.
One goal this winter was to visit Native American archeological and cultural sites. For each campsite I had listed a number of possible sites. Today we chose to visit Tonto National Monument even though it was over a hundred miles away.
It turned out to be a beautiful drive. We drove north across very flat land to route 60, which took us up through the mountains east of Phoenix.
And it did take us literally through the mountains.
The hills and rocks were gorgeous.
Then we took route 188 northwest to Roosevelt Lake. This lake was made by damming the Salt River in 1911. It is the oldest reservoir in Arizona.
Tonto National Monument protects and allows access to two cliff dwellings high above the lake.
From the visitor center we hiked a paved trail about a half mile up to the lower cliff dwelling. Looking back you could see the lake.
Looking forward you could see the cliff face.
As we hiked higher you could see more of the lake…
and we drew nearer to the cliff.
We got a look at the overhang with the cliff dwelling.
The trail came up along the bottom of the cliff.
This was as far as Matey was allowed. We had to take turns visiting the dwelling so one of us could stay with him.
With a view like this, a temperature of about 70 degrees and lots of sunshine it wasn’t much of a chore.
This was one of two cliff dwellings in Tonto National Monument. They were built in the 1300’s by people who had settled in the Salt River basin. The archaeological evidence indicates people from different groups might have lived here together.
Unfortunately little is known about the origin or fate of these people. The Apache and Yavapai people still living in the basin were forced out in the 1860’s and 1870’s and any oral history they might have had was mostly lost through the boarding school system that took their children from them and forbid the children their language, customs and history.
They certainly had a beautiful view as they went about their business. The tools on the floor are for grinding corn.
In the other direction, not looking down at what would have been Salt River, they looked out at Cholla Canyon. It was a long way down to the river, where they had water and grew crops. I think perhaps they only stayed up here in the heat of the summer, or perhaps in times of danger.
Once we both checked out the dwelling we hiked back down. It was great to be out finding places like this again.
We drove I-10 today from New Mexico to Arizona to Picacho Peak State Park. In fact we drove past it about 10 miles to a travel plaza where we could fill our fresh water tank because the park doesn’t have enough water for campers to fill.
This park was on our original itinerary and I was excited to find we’d be camping among saguaro cacti. I’ve never been around them before.
Their botanical name is Carnigiea gigantea, and you can certainly understand where the gigantea comes from.
These boys are big.
I find them captivating…
even in death.
There are cholla…
and barrel cacti here,
but I really love the saguaro.
They grow all the way on top of the peak.
We even have a young one right on our site.
We have four days to spend here where the spacing is more to our liking.
Even though we are still close to I-10, and you can hear traffic and trains,
the view from our site makes up for it.
At the end of the day I’m glad to be back on track.
We drove out of Texas yesterday, finally. When I was plotting our route to get to Arizona and back to our original itinerary, I saw a state park near Deming, New Mexico that looked intriguing. Of course, two weeks in advance there were no spaces available, so we’re staying in a commercial RV park in Deming.
But since we were taking another day off from driving we went up for a day trip to City of Rocks State Park.
We visited their Desert Botanical Garden…
and walked a trail through the huge boulders that are made of ancient volcanic ash.
In many places the trail was delineated with rocks as it wandered through these columns.
The area was quite expansive. The main group of rocks was about a mile long.
There were a few outlying formations.
There were many…
fantastic shapes…
and almost impossible positions.
Even the sky was putting on a show.
Outside this area of rocks…
the land stretched empty.
We saw quite a few sotol plants with spent flower stalks.
And these were large plants.
And we saw one of my favorite birds, a road runner.
We ate lunch at one of their picnic tables amid almost total silence.
There were campsites nestled around the formations.
And had I been able to make reservations early enough we could have camped here…
and not here.
And by the way, I did get online at 5AM and managed to get reservations at three of the four National and Provincial Parks in Canada I was hoping for.
Friday we drove another 300+ miles to funky little Menard County RV Park. Most of the folks there seemed to be semi permanent and they had fairly nice spots under oak trees.
We were in the transient slots, which were on a gravel area with no trees. But they were level and had full hookups so that was fine.
We were taking Saturday off from driving so I was hoping the adjacent county park would be nice for walking Matey.
And it was…
sort of.
We didn’t have much of a day off, anyway. Saturday we ran errands in the tiny town of Menard. We needed a water pressure gauge, a refrigerator thermometer, a small round battery, hose washers (the soft black kind) and Bud was hoping to find goat meat. Amazingly we found everything and the people in town were very kind.
Saturday afternoon Bud decided he should cook some meals ahead before the produce went bad. And I realized that was my last day to figure out what Canadian National Park campgrounds we wanted to stay in and when, before reservations open online on Tuesday. (We drove today and we are driving again tomorrow and reservations open at 5 AM Mountain Time.) So I spent all afternoon working out our itinerary for Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, which will be from June 7th to September 3rd.
After a less than restful day off we started out this morning to drive another 324 miles. The first part of the drive was pleasant, straight west on U.S. 190. This was a pretty smooth road with no traffic. You can see we’re getting into drier land here, but there were still trees.
The second half of the trip was no fun. Miles of open country on I-10 with lots of headwind and plenty of tractor-trailers. My least favorite kind of driving.
And here we are, still in Texas, at the Wild West RV Park in Van Horn. Happily another very level spot, because we didn’t unhitch.
We’re in another little town.
I’m glad we’re only staying overnight because this place has two of my banes for walking with Matey; stray dogs…
and goat’s head thorns.
At least out beyond the dusty parking lot, cheesy motel and very busy train tracks there are some striking rock formations.
On the Roam Again 