Arizona Day 5

This morning we had breakfast at the hotel. It wasn't nearly as good as the last one, which made everyone hungry and cranky by ten o'clock. Before ten rolled around we were having a great time, though. We drove north to hit three national monuments that we wanted to see. The first was Wupatki. This site is built out on the flat plain, and there are a few really impressive ruins to see. The ruins are built on top of ridges and look a bit like sentinel towers. It was amazing how the Sinagua people built them right around rocky outcroppings. We hiked to a few of these ruins, which were built out of flat rocks, and the kids earned a Junior Ranger badge.

There were so many cool ruins at Wuptaki. 

We loved being able to walk through the doorways. 

They were all built along washes and canyons, so we explored a little deeper on this ruin. 

This is the large ruin at Wupatki and it was amazing!

We loved the giant kiva. It was so cool! We would loved to have come to a meeting here. 

This took a few tries, but the boys had fun doing this panorama in the kiva. 

Dad was here, too! We loved how they built their homes right around the rocks. 

We wouldn't have lasted long in these homes with such short doorways. 

Our kids better grow up knowing a little history!

The second stop was Sunset Crater, and that's when everyone got a little grumpy. There was a hike through the lava field that was nice, but that was about it. Seth proclaimed this hike the best part of the day, and it was cool to see the black or red rock, some of it crushed to sand in the lava flows. They don't let you hike on the volcano, though, because it is sacred. The boys, of course, earned their second Junior Ranger badge.

The lava trail was windy and cold, but fun. 

Seth really wanted to touch the long pine needles. 

We always have to stop and smell the Ponderosa Pines. 

Mom suggested that these needles looked like brooms, so Seth and Dax started cleaning up the trail. 

We were freezing. Dax is wearing two, maybe three jackets. Who knew that northern Arizona would still be cold. Can you see all that snow on the mountain back there?

The final stop was Walnut Canyon. This national monument was quite a bit bigger. We did two separate hikes and saw a lot of Native American ruins. They were pretty cool because they were all built in an overhanging shelf in the canyon wall. It was like a whole line of apartments all down both sides of the landscape. The hike had 360 steps up from "apartment level," but that was nothing for us. There was also a rim top trail that the boys wanted to do because there was a slim chance of seeing a coati. We didn't see one, but the boys enjoyed their third Junior Ranger program.

The Walnut Canyon ruins were amazing.

They were built right under this overhang. It looks like Mark might hit his head, but there is plenty of room.

We liked walking inside some of them.

Dax was scared of the size of this prickly pear.

It was quite a climb out, and apparently Mark enjoyed it!

We spent a little time at the hotel while Mom did some shopping, and then we had dinner. Our final adventure was long, but also a favorite one. Flagstaff is the first city with a dark sky designation, which they proudly tout at the Lowell Observatory. Pluto was discovered by this observatory, and they won't let you forget it. They even have a Pluto Walk, which is a scale model of how far Pluto is from the sun compared to the other planets. Where Earth would be about 6 feet, Pluto is about 75 yards! We ended up spending over three hours at Lowell Observatory. The boys did their Junior Astronomer program while Dad enjoyed listening to some lectures by college students on Pluto and the Expanding Universe. We got to look through some small telescopes, and we got to see the massive one in the dome, but there was too much humidity to open the dome and look at the sky. Still we had a great time. We'd gladly go back to the observatory again.

We had fun at the science demonstrations.

The Pluto Walk was our favorite part. 

Dad was in heaven!