Arizona Borderlands

Wanting a taste of the Old West, we headed for the Slaughter Ranch and its restored 1880’s home in the far southeast corner of Cochise County on the Mexican border. The ranch is named for the “legendary” Texas John Slaughter, a lawman with a violent name who kept the peace in the old-fashioned way with pistols and rifles. I’d never heard of him, but it turned out he was a famous character with quite a history: Confederate War veteran, long-horn cattle driver on the famous Chisholm Trail, and then owner of the enormous cattle ranch in the then Arizona Territory.… Read more

WUPATKI NATIONAL MONUMENT

Explorers of the West in the 19^th Century like John Wesley Powell marveled at the scattered ruins of pueblos and strange volcanic landscape that makes up the area called Wupatki one of the many National Monuments in Central Arizona. So did we.

The scenic road from Sedona led us north winding around hairpin turns through Oak Creek Canyon and up over the Mongollan Rim at 8000 ft altitude. The road widened as we continued through wildflower-carpeted Ponderosa Pine woodlands to Flagstaff.… Read more

ARIZONA – Montezuma’s Castle and Well

 The second historic site near Sedona, Montezuma Castle National Monument has more to capture the eye and thoughts of the past than the meager remains of Tuzigoot. Early Spanish explorers thought the “castle” was built by the Aztecs. An offshoot of the monuments is called Montezuma’s Well, a watering source used by the local people for irrigation. Both parts are misnamed as the Aztecs lived thousands of miles south and the castle is a cliff house and there is no well.… Read more

ARIZONA – Tuzigoot and Jerome

Who can resist visiting a National Park Service Monument with the curious name of Tuzigoot? The word means Crooked Water in the Apache language but it preserves remains from peoples who arrived around the year 1000 AD to take advantage of water resources to grow corn, beans, squash to supplement their diet of deer and other game. And they also grew and wove cotton for garments and trade—the prized Pima cotton label we now look for on clothing and bedding labels.… Read more

ARIZONA: The Red Rocks of Sedona

Everyone says don’t miss Sedona. They were correct!

We turned off the freeway about two hours north of Phoenix to follow the road to Sedona winding through desert plants surrounded by small yellow butterflies flittering around flowering shrubs.

Another few turns brought us to a halt to stare in awe at the magnificent sight of orange and dark red sandstone sculpted into giant spires, plateaus, canyons and massive rock escarpments all constructed by the gods of wind and water over eons.… Read more