Wednesday, March 3, 2010

A visit to the Pilatki Indian Village, and just another Mountain Climb!


When we visited the Chamber of Commerce, one of the recommendations was that we visit the ruins of the Pilatki Indian Village. It is out in the middle of the desert so off we went with one hand on the four wheel drive button! The Indian Village is actually cave dwellings where they lived... very cool.This is the view as we approached on a dirt road...

It is a very dramatic location...


Found some real unusual rock along the track up to the caves...

If you look real close here, there is water falling off the mountain, and it turned the red rock black... this is due to chemicals in the water and the rock...

We approached the dwellings... it was a bit of a moderate climb to get to them...

I can't remember, but these ruins date back to like 600 AD or something like that, and the Indians living in them were growing food on the desert floor and that is why they stayed... no Wallmarts back then....

This is one of the tour guides... he stayed here as people approached him and asked questions...
As you can see, it would provide natural protection from the elements...

There were also pictographs located on this site, and we went to check them out... Gerard told me that in reality, these pictographs are simply "Indian Blogs" without the electronics...

The graphs were all over the walls here... they mostly seemed to depict animals...

I don't know about you, but this next one seems to be a man with an arrow through his head....
As I contemplated all the pictographs.... I gazed upwards and took this picture, of this big chunk of the mountain that seems to be ready to break away and fall to the ground, right about where we were standing.... hmmmmm.... I grabbed Debbie and Gerard, and Judy as well and said... OK, time to go....
It only took us about an hour and a bit at the Indian site, and we decided we had time to take another hike... We passed a trail head on the way into the Indian site, so we drove back to check it out. We had a tailgate lunch that Judy was good enough to prepare today, and then we were energized! Doe Mountain was the name, and you got to climb the mountain....400 foot climb in 7/10ths of a mile... OK.... I forget to get a picture of the mountain from the trail head, but this is part of it on the way up... Gerard said someone scooped out that hole with an ice cream scoop! He is so funny.....
This is about 1/2 way up, looking back at the cars.... I have had lots of practice since coming to Sedona with my handheld GPS. I am getting better, and today had real good luck with it... it will tell you how far we have walked.... in feet no less, and measures every foot of elevation going up... and we verified the trail head sign numbers...

Yes, we started down there on the desert floor, you can still see the cars... we made it to the summit and were able to walk the perimeter of the Mesa to get a 360 degree view... it was awesome! You had to be there....

This is a view from the top, you will see a large group of people to the right....in the far distance is Sedona....

I tried to get her to pose...but she wouldn't put the ________ camera down....
I quickly took this picture as she was starting to get real close to the edge and it was only 400 feet down, but I thought it might be a hard landing... but she made it back to safety.... whew...

Somebody actually had the nerve to put that trail arrow out on this rock, and man, it was on the edge! We only saw 3 or 4 fellow hikers go over the edge following this arrow..... a sad day....

Lots of great views from the top....

You get a totally different prospective of the mountain when you see it from the top! *My favorite Pic of today*

OK, I was starting to freak out as we walked past this big gap in the rocks....


Finally got Debbie to put the camera down... it was actually downright cold today, and they had their ski jackets on, but I got them to take them off as I took this picture...

We came across this area, that seems to be a new resort of some type under early construction.

Just another great view of AZ.

This has nothing to do with the hike, but is a neat picture of the 200 ducks that live on the pond right beside where we have our RV parked!

Very nice to see comments on the blog from last night from Melanie in France, ( a past Rotary Exchange Student) and from Shelly in Waterloo, Ontario. Oh, and yes, Shelly, your Mom freaked me out a couple of times today getting close to the edge... what is it with her????

As you can tell, another fantastic day in Az. We ended up at the Condo for a nice hot tub, and then headed out to the RV for a steak dinner on the bbq...

Till tomorrow.....

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