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| Montezuma Castle |
We traveled north through Phoenix and up into the Verde Valley, not far from Sedona, yesterday to visit Montezuma Castle. Our friends Dennis and Peggy are here from Cleveland - and unfortunately the weather is awful! Cold, cold, cold - but the rest of the country is the same - at least it isn't snowing!
This national monument is dedicated to the southern Sinagua (Spanish for 'those without water') people, a branch of the Hohokam people who lived from northern Arizona down into the upper area of Mexico. Sometime around 700 CE the Hohokam moved into the Verde valley and set up farming, pottery making, constructed ball courts, and built homes into cliffs of rivers and creeks where they could look out onto the bottomlands. Small structures and then pueblos were built along major streams and Montezuma Castle, nearby Montezuma Well and another site called Tuzigoot had a population of about 200 people. There are over several hundred pueblos and settlements throughout the Arizona, Utah, New Mexico area.
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| Inside Castle |
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| Beaver Creek |
Pretty impressive to see. This cliff dwelling was carved out of the limestone cliff and mud was used to put on the outside of the walls. We have been to Mesa Verde National Park many years ago and remembered what cliff dwellings looked like but this place was quite impressive in it's own right. About 1951 the Park system decided that they had to close off the dwelling to the public, too much damage and graffiti and many people taking artifacts made the decision easy. We did see a diarama of what the inside of the dwelling looked like and to think that this was built by women and children. The Sinagua were a matriarchial society - ruled by women.
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| Elvis Display |
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| Instruments of Israel |
Driving back down into Phoenix we stopped north of the city and went to MIM, the Musical Instrument Museum. Got sensory overload. Instruments from all over the world were displayed and each person was given a headset and monitor so that when you walked up to a display which had an interactive tv screen playing, you were automatically pulled into the viewing and could hear the program being performed at that screen. Very well done. Rooms were set up for countries of the world and you could walk from country to country's display and see and listen to people playing the instruments unique to that area. Another room had hands-on interactive where you could play instruments. Would need an entire day to effectively see and hear everything.
