the snow had melted overnight. I turned the heater
back on before I got out of the trailer and enjoyed a
half hour of warmth. While making my coffee I saw 5
pairs of great blue herons nesting in a huge tree
above the park. I don't know how they managed with
all the snow but they seemed quite active. I couldn't
tell if there were babies.
I packed up and headed down the mountain. The five
miles between Sedona and Oak Creek on Rt 179 has,
perhaps, one of the 5 best pieces of scenery in the
US. The red rock peaks are beyond description. Then
I got into Oak Creek, a Sedona wannabe and the beauty
of the last 10 minutes was shattered like a thrown
wine glass.
On to Montezuma National Monument which has nothing
whatsoever to do with Montezuma. It's a 4 story
apartment complex built into a cave in the side of a
cliff by the Sinagua in about the year 1000 and is
amazingly well preserved. The area was abandoned in
about 1400 and no one knows why or where the Sinagua
went. The Hopis have some oral history of absorbing
them into the tribe but there is no other evidence.
I drove through Camp Verde and into Coconino National
Forest and the Clear Creek Campground. This whole
area is part of the Yavupi-Apache Reservation and
there is a casino in Camp Verde. I took a quick walk
through it. Mostly slot machines. The new technology
allows one to play the slots without using cash. You
get a kind of casino credit card that you wear on an
elastic leash around your neck and insert into the
machine. Some people have two or three cards and seem
to be connected to the slots like patients in an
intensive care ward.
It's a cool clear night. The moon is about half full.
There's an enormous sycamore tree that's been cut
down and the largest parts of the trunk are lying next
to my camp site. I peeled some punky layers of wood
off them and had my first campfire in a couple weeks.
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