Road Trip 2012: Entering Red Rock Country

 When we first arrived in Flagstaff, AZ, the plan was to spend a day frolicking around the Arches National Park in Utah before commencing with our Arizona-based activities. Unfortunately, that turned out to be significantly further away that we expected, so we had to nix Utah from the travel plans.

Instead, we spent our full day in Flagstaff exploring the Red Rock country over in Sedona. The Oak Creek highway is a 15-mile stretch of scenic highway that winds up (to? through? Not entirely certain where it ends) Sedona, with some truly stunning red rock formations. Conveniently, Montezuma's Castle, another site we wanted to see, was just beyond it.

First up was Montezuma's Well, a natural spring of some sort. We'd actually intended to skip it, but took a wrong turning on our way to the Castle, and figured Why Not?

I was particularly enamored with this tree, and Katie humored me

Our first cliff dwelling!

 We knew that Montezuma's Castle would be a cliff dwelling, but had no idea that we would get a preview at the Well! I took an archaeology class last fall that featured several cliff dwellings, so I geeked out a bit and pretended I knew what I was talking about.

The Well itself

We didn't linger overlong, as the heat was a bit overpowering. The altitude kept us very dehydrated, despite our best efforts, for our entire stay in Arizona. Moving on to the Castle. It is one of the largest and best preserved cliff dwellings in the area, over 1000 years old and last occupied something like 700 years ago. It is not a castle, nor does it have any connection to the fabled Montezuma. The settlers who discovered it assumed that something so impressive was built as a castle for the great leader, and thus it got its name.

Despite another rattlesnake sign warning us to stay on the trail, the only wildlife we encountered were some funny little lizards that did pushups and turned in circles on their beds like dogs. We weren't able to get a good picture, but they were quite the animated little fellows. 

For our return trip through Oak Creek, we stopped at several pull-outs for less reflection-y pictures. Despite rising and falling some 3000 feet while severely overloaded, Candy pulled through and got us home in one piece.

Once back in Flagstaff, with its normal rocks, we wandered around the Historic Train District for dinner and some light shopping, and stole more free wifi from the surrounding hotels (when we checked in and tried to buy internet, we were informed that the Motel 6 internet was down, but prompted to scrounge some wifi off of a neighboring hotel. Worked like a charm). Up next: the Grand Canyon!!