It's Not Montezuma's Revenge

We did some site seeing again today.  Here's the map of the area.  We decided to go to Montezuma's Castle and then to Montezuma's Well.

The Whale is parked where the little x is just south of Cottonwood.  We drove to Montezuma's Castle first.

The story they give is that the Sinagua Indians, who were farmers built these dwelling in the 1100's.  Early settlers marveled at the structure and assumed that it was Aztec in origin, hence the name Montizuma.  But he was never in this area, so it was not his work.  Most of the Indians here and the park rangers believe this was the work of the Hopi Indians.  Anyway, it's pretty incredible to think that people lived in these cliffs.

The cliffs run along the Verde River and they were able to plant, hunt and survive from the abundance around them, even though it's considered desert.

We then drove on down the road to see Montezuma's Well.  It really incredible in many ways.  The water level stays constant and it produces 1.5 million gallons of water a day and has for many years.  You climb up to the top of the crater they say was created with the earth caved into the water pit underground.

Scuba drivers have gone down into this to try to find the source of the spring, but it's too deep and dark for them to really see much.

The Indians built homes again under the cliffs around the well.

There are no fish in the water, only a rare breed of leeches because the carbon dioxide is about 6 times what is normal.

We took a hike down to the bottom of the crater to the water and saw these cacti growing out of the top of one of the rocks.

There were more dwellings built into the caves close to the bottom of the well.

After walking down into the well level, we came back up and then around the rim until we walked down a rock path to see where the water exits the well and runs down thru a canal system until it reaches the River.

We left Montezuma's well and drove down the road a ways to find Montezuma's lake.  It wasn't very large.  I don't think you could ski on this.

The weather has been great, but there is a change in the air.  The clouds began to roll in and it looks pretty awesome as we head back down the road to the camp ground.

It supposed to cool down to the 60's for a couple of days.  Hopefully, it will push some of the warmer weather north for all of our friends and family that need spring to happen very soon.

Blessings,

Kathy