Link to Montezuma Castle Facebook Pictures

So we left Phoenix on Saturday morning, to head north towards Sedona.  Our first stop, before Sedona, was a place called Montezuma Castle.  It is about 800 years old and was built by the Sinagua people.  This was only one of many communities in this area, known as the Verde Valley.

Before we entered the park, I was admiring this little motorized bicycle parked off to the side, when the owner came out and started talking to us about it.  She is a park ranger, and rides this bike to and from work daily.  She was telling me how great it is and was recommending that I get one.  It seems pretty awesome, inexpensive, and simple to work on / assemble.  We got a few pictures with her before we left the park.  I gave her one of our cards, and would love to hear from her again if she’s reading this!

We stopped at a roadside vendor for some deer jerky.  He also had elk jerky, buffalo jerky, salmon jerky, and traditional beef jerky.  It was a bit pricey ($15) but it was delicious.  I would recommend it as a tasty and high-protein treat.  The guy is Jerky Jack.  He gave us some great tips on places to camp slightly north of Sedona.

Onward to Montezuma’s well!  This area is fed by water that is potentially thousands of years old.  The water is being forced out from deep underground by thermal pressure, I believe.  The CO2 content is much higher than in a normal lake, so fish cannot survive here.  They have a bunch of leeches and some algae.  I know some of the species are native only to this lake.  I’m hoping the previous inhabitants didn’t drink it, although I think they did.

There is also a neat canal next to the lake, which channeled a lot of the water for various uses.  I believe there were about 7 miles of canals, but what I found interesting is that scientists found high levels of arsenic in the water.  So the very thing that is keeping people hydrated / alive in this arid environment could have also been slowly poisoning them at the same time.  There are some HUGE trees in Arizona, as well.

After Montezuma’s well, we went to Sedona.  We didn’t have time to do any hiking, but we did go to “Uptown” Sedona for a nice evening stroll.  Uptown is where all of the touristy shops are – kind of like Helen (GA) but with a desert feel.  It was nice, but mostly overpriced.  

I am still on the hunt for my Saguaro cactus antenna topper.  We went into at least half a dozen stores, and the store owners knew exactly what we were referring to, but they hadn’t seen them in YEARS.  One lady at a toy-shop told us that they stopped carrying them when Walgreen’s started selling them at the wholesale price that they were buying them for.  She suggested that we try Walgreen’s, so we did.  No luck.  The employees there knew exactly what we were looking for, too, and told us to try Ace Hardware in the morning.  It’s a futile hunt, I believe.

After Walgreen’s, we headed north of Sedona to our campsite, off of FR-515.  There were a ton of commercial campsites before we got to this forest road, and then there were people camping on either side of the forest road, for MILES.  It is a very popular place.  We still managed to find a pretty secluded area to set up our tent, and I cooked a Mountain Meal for myself before laying down for bed.  I also snapped some cool pictures of the moon / the outlines of the trees by adjusting my shutter speed WAY down and trying multiple times.  Enjoy!