| Many
road trippers head into the Southwest with a single mission:
to see the Grand Canyon. They are so intent on looking
out over the Canyon's grand vistas that they skip other
attractions along the way. Suzanne and Craig Sheumaker
have a different mission: to introduce four of the Canyon's
close neighbors and give visitors reason to pause a little
longer in this extraordinary region. |
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What
was the reason for these ancient, carved images?
Did they have spiritual significance, point the
way to great hunting grounds, memorialize major
events? Or were they graffiti? Enjoy and ponder! |
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Giant
trees once covered a lush Southwest landscape.
Today their broken remains, turned to stone, lay
on a desert floor, beckoning you to look closely
at their colorful, crystallized centers.
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Between
A.D. 1100 and 1250, stone-and-mortar rooms were
tucked into canyon walls to house several hundred
Sinagua Indians and provide ample storage space.
Today, you can walk alongside them! |
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Virtually
every mountain you see from here is volcanic in
origin - part of the San Francisco Volcano Field
that covers 1,800 square miles. Sunset Crater
is the youngest of 600 volcanoes. |
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This
is just one section of an apartment-style building
preserved behind the park's visitor center. Constructed
after the eruption of Sunset Crater, it was surrounded
by rich farmland layered with volcanic ash, which
retained moisture and nourished crops. |
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Among
many Native Peoples, ball games served as vital
links between friends, neighbors and traders.
The original ball court at Wupatki - the only
known masonry court in the entire Southwest -
has been faithfully reconstructed. Cool! |
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Something strange happens when travelers approach
the Grand Canyon. At the prospect of seeing America's greatest
scenic wonder, even the most leisurely road tripper turns
into a roadrunner.
Do yourself a favor: Slow down. Why go barreling
across Interstate 40 in Arizona, ignoring the road signs for
Petrified Forest National Park and Walnut Canyon National
Monument? Why speed north on Highway 89 from Flagstaff, bypassing
the turnoff for Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and
Wupatki National Monument? When you learn what you have missed,
you might kick yourself.
These four attractions are national treasures
in their own right - exceptional for their historical and
geological significance as well as for their often-startling
beauty. Located just off the main route to the Grand Canyon,
each makes an easy - and very satisfying - side trip.
Petrified
Forest National Park
Trees that turned to stone more than 200 million
years ago are the focal point of this very unusual park, but
they're not the only attractions. Your visit will begin with
a drive through a picturesque swath of the Painted Desert
-- a rainbow-striped terrain of eroded hills and expansive
grassland. Be sure to stop at the visitor center to see the
fossils of prehistoric reptiles that roamed this region when
it was a tropical river basin. Then continue along the park
road to the remains of much more recent human activity at
Puerco Pueblo, where you will find well-preserved rock carvings.
An easy path enables you to see where the Ancestral
Pueblo people pecked intricate petroglyphs into large boulders
600 to 900 years ago. Still ahead of you is the once-lush,
now-petrified forest that gives the park its name. At first
glance, the site might not seem like much -- just a scattering
of huge, broken tree trunks across a dry landscape - but don't
let this deter you. Get out of your car and examine individual
logs up close. Their interior beauty is so glorious you might
almost understand why souvenir hunters once dynamited petrified
trees to get at their brightly colored, crystallized centers
before the national park system took control.
In total, the drive through Petrified Forest
National Park is only 28 miles, but plan on it taking about
two to three hours with the stops.
Walnut
Canyon National Monument
Native Peoples settled in this rugged high country
around A.D. 600 and remained for roughly eight centuries.
They first lived in one-room pit houses on the rim of the
canyon and then moved down into the canyon walls, building
approximately 300 stone-and-mortar rooms within the natural
recesses. Today, on a convenient, forested trail out of the
visitor center, you can walk to some of the rim-top sites
and alongside 25 of the canyon rooms. Here human history feels
very tangible. Look for ancient fingerprints pressed into
the clay mortar during construction. Note the smoke-blackened
stains from cooking fires that burned more than 700 years
ago. See the T-shaped entryways that were designed to control
the airflow through some of the rooms.
Also gaze out across the canyon to other walls
and other ruins. Altogether, several hundred people lived
here at one time. Why did they move into this canyon when
water was not close by and the only nighttime light came from
small fires? Your walk to discover the answers will be less
than a mile round-trip. Although a bit strenuous, with 240
stairs back to the visitor center, it's worth the effort.
Sunset
Crater Volcano National Monument
In geologic time, this area is young. Sunset
Crater, which rises 1,000 feet above the surrounding landscape,
was formed during a series of volcanic eruptions beginning
around A.D. 1064. The Bonita lava flow gushed from the crater's
rocky flanks around 1180 and spread out at its base. A final
burst of activity in the 1200s painted the upper portion of
the otherwise black monolith with bright red, orange and yellow
cinders that reflect a rosy glow at sunset. Today this fascinating
area remains an inhospitable environment, although some trees
and wildflowers have managed to gain a foothold.
Begin at the visitor center, where you will learn
about volcanoes and earthquakes and their impact on the local
people. Then walk the one-mile loop trail over a now-solid
river of black lava that once undulated, bubbled and exploded
into fantastical shapes. You will see a squeeze-up (created
when molten lava oozed like toothpaste through a crack in
hardened lava), a spatter cone (built up around a gas vent),
jagged aa lava, smoother pahoehoe lava and much
more. NASA used this volcanic terrain to test a lunar vehicle
before the 1972 Apollo 17 mission to the moon - a testament
to its otherworldliness.
Wupatki
National Monument
You can reach this remarkable red-rock destination
via a paved road over the Sunset Crater lava flow. Back in
the 1100s, Native Peoples migrated away from the volcanic
activity to this safer valley, establishing rich and influential
communities that reached out to thousands of people within
a day's walk. At what is now Wupatki, the inhabitants built
a 100-room pueblo (easily accessible just behind the visitor
center) and nearby satellite settlements (also easily accessible).
With its large amphitheatre and ball court, the pueblo was
clearly an important cultural center -- a link with distant
trading partners as well as between neighbors. As you stroll,
imagine the sounds of children playing, crowds cheering at
the ball game, and traders exchanging local goods for turquoise,
shell jewelry, copper bells, parrots and other exotic items.
These four national parks and monuments are the
Grand Canyon's captivating neighbors. Petrified Forest and
Sunset Crater are scenic delights. Walnut Canyon and Wupatki
are among the historical destinations featured in our travel
guide, America's
Living History - The Early Years. All four are open
year-round, as is the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. (The
North Rim is closed from mid-October to mid-May.) We hope
you will take the time one day to visit these sites and enjoy
their exceptional heritage.
Suzanne & Craig
Sheumaker
10/21/07
 Suzanne
and Craig Sheumaker, a husband-and-wife team from California,
have a long history of exploring and discovering. Suzanne
is a professional writer who began her career promoting
world travel, went on to other topics (primarily heath
care), and then returned to travel writing in recent years.
Craig is a professional graphic designer and commercial
photographer. While searching out scenic locations for
Craig's stock photography business, the Sheumakers became
intrigued by the many historical places that bring America's
past to life and make history meaningful in today's world.
They picked their favorite pre-1845 destinations to showcase
in their specialty traveler's guide, America's
Living History - The Early Years. Craig is also
a RoadTrip Advisor on RTA's Great American RoadTrip Forum. |
