Wupatki, Sunset Crater and Walnut Canyon

Had an awesome day with friends at three National Monuments that we had never visited.
The Monuments were however all up at Flagstaff so we had to suffer through the wind and cooool weather.

The first park was the Wupatki National Monument and it is quite large with five different ruin sites.
This one is the Lomaki Pueblo in the Box Canyon.

The box canyon was a very large earthquake crack and we were allowed to go right into these ruins.

Here we have the main Wupatki ruins, the circles are meeting places.

It was a very large set of ruins often made between natural laying rocks.

Look at this little fellow, Dick had to get his attention so we could get his picture.

It was a very large set of ruins, so thankful that things like this were kept for us to see, they are about 800 years old.

Off to the Sunset Crater, it blew between the year of 1040 to 1100.

The Lava flows are amazing, it was one powerful blast.

Next stop Walnut Canyon which involved us walking down into a large canyon and walking around an island where you could see over 300 homes from the 1100's in the mountainside, it must have been some community.

The homes were are build at one level in the rocks where the stone had been eroded away and made perfect shelters with overhangs to keep the rain and snow out, remember we are at 7000 feet elevation.

We got to walk right past many of the homes on the island.

If you look close you can see the trail around the island on the left hand side of the photo.

Really enjoyed three such totally different monuments in an area we had not explored before with great company, thanks for taking us Dick and Barb.