Geezer IX - Geezer Day 5

There were clear skies this morning so after breakfast we were off to Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments.  Steph decided she would rather stay home and enjoy the solitude so there were only five of us going.  Sunset Crater and Wupatki is less than an hour’s drive from Flagstaff so we were soon there.

There is a loop that runs through both areas so our first stop was Sunset Crater.  It is an area of ancient volcanic activity which left large lava fields and a crater.  We took a short hike through the lava fields and made a couple of other stops before heading on to Wupatki.  The weather continued to be beautiful with blue skies and scattered clouds, but we did see darkening skies to the west.

The lava fields of Sunset Crater.

 

We drive down and out of the mountains to Wupatki.

We moved on to Wupatki, which is an area of ancient pueblo ruins.  We stopped first at the visitor’s center and hiked out to the largest of the ruins.  It is a very interesting area and the ruins are quite extensive.  The area by the visitor’s center was probably home to about 150 inhabitants, but there were once over 40,000 living across the whole Wupatki area.  

After finishing at the visitor’s center, we headed off to another ruin called Wukoki where we spent some time exploring and taking pictures.  By the time we finished there it was getting past lunchtime so we decided we better start back and get something to eat.

Wukoki

 

Dark clouds are moving in.

There were a few more ruins to visit, but we skipped those and started back to Flagstaff.

As we left the park the cloud cover got heavier and heavier and soon we were going through some very heavy rain showers.  At one point it must have hailed as it was piled up along the road and looked like snow.  Places to eat were far and few between, but we finally found a place to grab a hamburger and then drove on back to the house.

We thought maybe we could find something for lunch here, but after looking around, we decided to move on.

We arrived back at the house around 4:00 and the house smelled wonderful.  Steph was in charge of dinner tonight and was making pot roast, potatoes and vegetables, and biscuits.  After downloading our pictures it was time for dinner and we had another delicious meal, the pot roast was great.


Pot roast for dinner, delicious.

After dinner it was mostly talk, but things were a little somber as Greg and John were leaving tomorrow.  The week has gone by so quickly it’s hard to believe tomorrow is our last day together.  We are already talking about where we will go next year.