Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte
August 12, 1999
Before we left Phoenix, we received an issue of the Arizona Highways magazine that had an article about a short hike near Sedona. We decided to go and check out the area to be sure we could find it and to see what the terrain looked like. The spot is actually just North of Oak Creek, so it seems easier for us to go up I-17 to Oak Creek. Otherwise you have to drive through West Sedona and Sedona, and boy has that turned into a traffic nightmare! There are actually two rock formations here with several trails. You can walk around both formations, or either, depending on
how much of a hike you are interested in. The full circle around both is listed as 3.7 miles on a packed dirt trail. We walked for about 15 minutes and decided it was definitely a hike we wanted to go back for when the weather cools off another five degrees. Just in that 15 minutes we went through a grove of pine trees that reminded us very strongly of the days when we used to live in Estes Park, Colorado. We figure in a few weeks, we’ll be ready for a “picnic hike”. Here are the
pictures we took on the first trip. After we go for the real hike, I’ll add our comments.
A Fun Family Day
August 15, 1999
Scott and Cory and the boys came up to spend the day today. We went to Dead
Horse Ranch park and walked around the lake looking for frogs or snakes. No luck on the frogs and snakes, but lots of dragonflies and a guppy. After the walk we threw the Frisbee around for a while and then went to lunch at Peter Piper Pizza. When you have youngsters with you there aren’t too many restaurants that are better than that one. The day wasn’t too hot and it seemed like everyone had a good time. I think if they have a chance, they’ll be up to camp up here occasionally. They seemed to like the park too. Scott had some other recommendations for short side trips. We will probably take all of them eventually.
Palatki Ruins and Rock Art
August 19, 1999
A few days ago, one of the RV park owners told us about a cliff dwelling site that is more of a local attraction than Montezuma’s Castle. She said that she likes to send people who like attractions that are off the beaten path up there. The directions to get there were “go up 89A to the place where the two trees are. (She described it as a spot in the road where there are two trees directly across from each other on either side of the road.) Then turn on road 525 and go back to the ruins.” It sounded like a great place because they actually allow you to go into the cliff dwelling. She also explained that for quite a while it was privately owned, but now it is owned by the National Forest Service and costs $5.00 per person to get in. It still sounded like fun. So, we headed up the road looking for two big trees. Well, they are not very big. I guess we got the impression that we should be looking for two giant cottonwoods or something, but they are actually normal sized mesquite trees. So, we turned onto a dirt road. The sign said 6 miles to Palatki. When we took a trip to Sierra Vista about a year ago, we went looking for a place called Parker Lake. That day, we went down a dirt road that occasionally had side roads with signs that said “PRIMITIVE ROAD”. The road we were on that day seemed extremely primitive, so we never ventured down the marked ones. Well, the road to Palatki Ruins was a “primitive road”. The best way to describe it is a
boob shaker. Man, you want to have your bra straps cinched up real tight going down this road. I was really amazed to see all the passenger cars that actually make that trek.
Anyway, once we got there, we went to the Information Center and paid our entry fee and learned a little about the site. It is actually 2 sites. One site is the ruins of a Sinagua cliff dwelling and the other is a site with over 1,000 pictographs and petroglyphs. We followed one of the rangers up to the
cliff dwelling site first. It is so well hidden in behind the trees, that if you weren’t looking at exactly the right spot on the trail, you wouldn’t even know it was there. Palatki (a Hopi word meaning “red house”) was inhabited approximately 800 years ago. They figure it was built around 1150 and abandoned (nobody knows why) about 1300. As we have heard from a number of other sources, the Sinagua culture flourished until the 1400s and then just seemed to disappear. This particular cliff dwelling site was two stories tall. Once you get inside, it appears that the Sinaguans were not very tall. According to the ranger the men were about 5 1/2 tall. He said that the archaeologists believe that since the roof collapsed and a lot of dirt has accumulated since then, the floor is about 1 foot higher now than it was originally. We could see the holes in the walls where the original vigas were placed to hold the second floor and if you imagined the floor being one foot lower, it just about made sense. You can still see the sooting on the rock wall at the back of the room which indicates a long term fire spot. It was probably not a cooking fire, because the life of the Sinaguans was primarily outside. It may have been a heating fire in the winter, but we’ll never know. One other person who was there found a pottery shard while she was poking, but it is a federal offense to take anything from a site like this, so she hid it. It was pretty interesting.
After leaving the cliff dwelling, we followed the trail to the
rock art.
You have to understand that the rock art and the cliff dwelling actually have nothing to do with each other. They don’t know why, but the art on the walls of the Red Cliffs goes back as far as 6,000 years ago, and includes art from numerous different peoples. There are a number of alcoves, each with all kinds of rock art, and the rangers try to point out all of them. It is amazing. If you are interested in petroglyphs and pictographs, this
ASU site is full of information. One side note: anything on a site like this that is at least 50 years old is considered historically important, so in the spot where some early Americans scratched their names and the date ‘1888’ you aren’t looking at graffiti, but history. Just the rock art half of the trip made the $5.00 apiece worth it. This site is definitely an excellent trip (even with the boob shaker road). We give it:
Visitors in the Night
August 22, 1999
About a week ago, Gary woke up in the middle of the night to a most obnoxious smell. He immediately identified it as skunk. For those of you who have never smelled a skunk, trust me when I say that it is one of the few natural sensations that you know the very first time you run across it. (kind of like a rattlesnake: even the first time you hear one, you know exactly what you are hearing.) He turned the fan to blow out the window and most of the nastiness was gone in just a few minutes. I slept through most of the stink, but I did wake up just as the last of the smell dissipated. We figured that a skunk had walked under the trailer. They do tend to leave an aftersmell even if nobody scared them. Well, last night as we were getting ready for bed, I noticed that the cats were intently watching something outside the door. Since I could hear some scrabbling out there, I decided to turn on the outdoor light and see what it was. At first nothing was there, then I saw the skunk walk out from under the stairs. I told Gary it was out there and when it heard my voice, it turned around and faced me
and flipped its tail up! When they want you to leave them alone, they face you and
stomp their front feet. I have no idea if this one stomped because I turned the light off. Gary wanted to see it, so I turned the light back on just in time to see it disappear around the fence. Hmm—no stink this time. That’s good! We met one of the other campers who was over at the bathroom and he said that he had just chased three away from his trailer. Hmmm. This is not the kind of visitors we like at night. Come to think of it, we aren’t much into any kind of Strangers in the Night.
Through Jerome to Prescott
August 29, 1999
When we lived in Cottonwood 6 years ago, we didn’t really get out much. The problem was mostly that it was a pain in the neck to pull out the hoses and electric and put up the awning and batten down everything to go for a short ride so it just never seemed worth it. We went up to Jerome with my brother when his family came to visit. We even went for a short ride beyond Jerome toward Prescott just for the ride. Since we never went all the way to Prescott, we thought today would be a good day. It is a pretty nice ride for the passenger, but the driver gets to work pretty hard. The road between the two towns is mostly a twisty, turny mountain road that is just wide enough for 2 vehicles. The road through Jerome isn’t quite as wide as the rest of the road, which made us wonder about the guy in the big 40-ft motorhome that we saw coming
down through Jerome. He had to be a nervous wreck—or on some real good drugs. There are some curves through town that look like you need a motorhome that bends in the middle to get around! Either that or you take up the whole road. It kind of reminded me of the cartoons where you see a car pulling a trailer up a mountain road and both vehicles sort of snake around the curves. We absolutely would not pull our rig over that road! NO WAY! There aren’t even any places big enough to turn around, let alone stop and take pictures. The good news is that the road goes up over 7,000 feet so there is a huge pine forest and the temperature is glorious. It was probably 95 in Cottonwood, and no more than 70 going over the top of the hills.
A lot of people say that Jerome is a neat town, but we didn’t really see anything that we needed to stop and investigate. It seems to be full of antique places and some other artsy things. Not really our style, although there were a lot of people shopping. I know for sure that I wouldn’t want to live there. Prescott is kind of unusual. It sits at about 5,300 feet, so it is a little cooler than Cottonwood and definitely larger. I’m still a little unclear about what the big draw to Prescott is. There doesn’t seem to be much industry there, but again, lots of people like it there.
All in all, it was an OK ride and took about 3 hours with a lunch stop at Burger King.
