While I’ve never in my life been to the Grand Canyon, living in Arizona is a step closer in that direction. However, it’s still a 3-to-4 hour drive from our house in the Phoenix area. So on Tuesday, we entertained the idea of waking up at the crack of dawn and driving up to the Canyon.
…Instead we got up around 7ish and were able to drive north and make it to Sedona around 10 a.m. (another place I’ve never been).
It turned out to be quite cooler up in Sedona, with temperatures hitting 112 in Phoenix, but only 91 in Sedona. After doing a lot of research on the area, I wanted to start out the day with a hike at Red Rock National Park.
With little to no cell phone service, the step-by-step GPS directions I pulled from websites turned out to be a life saver! The views were beautiful, and there was tons of red sand all around, painting the canyons and mountains.
After 1.81 miles (which turned out to be a 45-minute hike in the beating sun), we decided to call it quits with the hiking and headed back to the car for lunch. We brought an ice chest and it hung out in the trunk during our hike.
Hungry and hot, we found a picnic table in the shade and ate quinoa & black bean salad, coconut water/Powerade, chocolate chip cookie Larabars, apples and carrots. Oh yeah and we had amazing views still!
After lunch, we drove a few miles down a dusty trail to the Palatki Heritage Site – a national preserve with Native American ruins and cave paintings! I don’t think I’ve ever seen preserved cave paintings, or any cave paintings really, before. It was a really neat experience and we learned a great deal about the history of Arizona and its indigenous people.
If you look closely, you can see the ruins up in the cliff above. They have carbon dated it back to the 11th or 12th century, and it was abandoned in the 13th century due to a massive drought in the valley. Apparently that was the transition from nomadic tribes hunting and wandering through the area, to staying permanently as farming developed here.
So it was quite a contrast to see the cave paintings, which have been left by many different nomadic tribes, dating back to the last 100 years. The different colored paints denote the different tribes that have left their mark. The government has declared this an official historical site and will not remove any paintings 50 years or older -- all carbon dated for authenticity.
Apparently these are some of the best preserved ruins and cave paintings in the state! It was really amazing, we spent over two hours at these two sites. If you have something similar near you, I highly recommend that you go and check it out. It was totally mind blowing!
Me in the caves!
And that was only the first half of our day trip. So, while it wasn’t my original intention, this is going to be a two-part post :) I literally took hundreds of pictures and can’t wait to show you the rest.
Stay tuned for Part 2, but until then, I’m going to share with you the song that was stuck in my head during the entire first half of the morning, haha. I love this album and this song, so enjoy!
(Side note: This song is apparently about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which I recently read about in the book Sophie’s World. I read excerpts from that book in high school and have been looking for it ever since. I recently stumbled across it at a used book store and if you’re interested in learning about a general survey of world philosophy, you should certainly look into it! However, it does get quite heavy towards the end and I semi found myself at some form of existential crossroads after reading. It’s stuck with me almost a month after finishing it.)
