Arizona Post #4: Sedona and Montezuma Castle

We finished off our trip with a visit to Sedona. That morning we hiked to Devil's Bridge, which has the largest natural sandstone arch in the Sedona area. (Since I don't think we will make it to Arches National Park this year, I feel like this was a good substitute!) Sam and J went out on the arch, but I was too nervous to try to walk across while carrying Lucy in a backpack. Sam got a little nervous himself when they stopped to pose for this picture (see above), but he told me afterward that he calmed himself down by thinking about he was going to go back to school after Spring Break ended.

The hike to the arch was lovely, and it was one of my favorite things on our whole trip. Although there was a little bit of scrambling involved, it was easy enough to do with a backpack. It started to rain for a few minutes while we were hiking, but the timing was excellent because we just happened to walk past a large sandstone ledge at that moment.

All of the cacti in Arizona reminded me of how, when I was about Sam's age, a boy pushed me down onto a potted barrel cactus plant and my mom had to pull the spines out of my bottom. I had completely forgotten this story until I saw the cacti (I probably wanted to push it out of my memory!). Sam was really intrigued by it, and kept asking, "Does this cactus look like the one you sat on?"

I love this picture of Sam in the sandstone ledge! This is where we waited for the short rainstorm to end.

At the arch!

After leaving Sedona, we drove back down to Phoenix, but stopped at Montezuma Castle (with ancient cliff dwellings dating between 1100-1450 CE) and Montezuma Well along the way. This was the third National Park Service site that we visited on our trip; I'm glad that we were able to pack in so many visits to the Park Service! I want to support the National Parks this year as a way to celebrate the centennial of the NPS.

Lucy was less impressed with the ruins themselves, but she liked the little cutaway diorama-type display showing inhabitants within the structures. She sobbed, "People! People!" when we left that area of the site.

It was really fascinating to learn that 1.5 million gallons of water flow into Montezuma Well each day. There is a large amount of dissolved carbon dioxide gas in the water, so fish can't survive in this well (and I assume that makes the water undrinkable for humans?), but the water was used for irrigation by the people who made their home in this region.

And with these last to sites, our trip pretty much ended there. We drove back to Phoenix that afternoon. Lucy had a long nap in the car (she was so worn out from traveling), but that allowed J and I to have a nice chat in the car. (I remember we had a long conversation about friendship and what it means to be a friend to someone - perhaps I will write a post about that topic one day.) That evening we dined at the Phoenix Public Market Cafe and got ready for our flight home. 

We had a wonderful trip and I'm so glad that everything worked out so we could go!