Welcome to Flagstaff

Rachel and I have just finished our first week in Flagstaff and already we are in love with the area. Where to begin? Well for someone like me who is interested in Native American history, this region is rich in resources for the study of tribes that I have never heard of, and some that I am familiar with. At Wupatki National Park, Sunset Crater, and Walnut Canyon there are Pueblo dwellings to tour. At the Museum of Northern Arizona there are also a great deal of resources on Native peoples. This blog, however, will focus on the nature of Flagstaff that Rachel and I have experienced thus far. On Saturday we visited Sunset Crater National Park and hiked through a mile section of the Bonita Lava Flow. Sunset Crater blew its top about two years before the Battle of Hastings. We were able to see collapsed lava tubes, mini-volcanos, and even the original cone of the volcano which geologists believe floated off to the west of Sunset Crater.

The image below shows an area of the lava flow with Sunset Crater in the background. Visitors are no longer able to walk to the top of the crater as erosion has, in the past, caused damage to the tree system on the south side of the crater. One of the wayside markers mentioned that during the 1930s a movie was being shot outside of Flagstaff and the climactic scene called for Sunset Crater to blow up. Something the director of the film actually wanted to pay the townspeople for the right to do; thankfully they rejected his offer and the movie was forced to shoot their climactic scene elsewhere.

This next picture shows one of the collapsed lava tubes in the Bonita Flow area. As the lava flowed down from Sunset Crater, a crust began to form, eventually it hardened to a thickness of several feet. When lava no longer flowed beneath the crust, earthquakes occurred and most of the lava tubes collapsed in on themselves. Rachel and I saw these collapsed tubes all over the park.

This final photo from Sunset Crater shows the crater and another part of the flow. There were many amazing things to see at this site. The wayside markers were very good as far as NPS sites go. On the side of the crater you can see a dark area where very few trees grow today as well as a few lines, faint but just visible if you study the picture. This is the area that tourists used to use as they climbed the crater. The devastation caused by the thousands of tourists over many decades has resulted in the loss of many trees as their root systems (already tenuous) became increasingly exposed as more and more people walked over them on this part of the crater.

Sunset Crater was fun to explore and very educational as well. Once we left the park, Rachel and I had learned that we had moved to a volcano field, volcanic highlands, a region of over 600 volcanoes! I was never bothered living close to the Yellowstone caldera, we were told that if that caldera blew its top, there would be no point in trying to flee the Little Big Horn National Monument. However, this does bother me slightly, for one major reason.

Geologists used to think that Sunset Crater was hundreds of thousands if not millions of years old. In fact, it wasn't until they discovered pit dwellings and pueblos beneath some of the lava flows that they realized humans had lived in this area before Sunset Crater existed and had to flee the area. All of the wayside markers discuss the fact that there is still activity beneath this lava field and at some point, most of the geologists agree, another volcano will form close to the east of Sunset Crater. It is a little scary but also fascinating to think about that type of cataclysmic change happening in this area.

On Sunday Rachel and I wanted to take another trail and see more of Flagstaff. We decided to take Sunset Trail to the top of Mount Elden. This trail was rated as easy.....EASY.....hmmm. We discovered that the rating should have been moderate to strenuous once we began hiking. Here are some of the beautiful pictures we took today on this trail:
The first one is of Rachel in an Alpine Meadow on one of the many switchbacks on the way to the summit.

Along the trail we saw three boulders that were broken in two with small trees growing
through the fissure.

There were many interesting trees along the trail other than the ones that were breaking boulders as they grew. We saw evidence of recent controlled burns that left tall, charred tree remains everywhere. We also witnessed graffiti carved onto birch trees. Some of this graffiti was several decades old.

And everywhere we went, Humphrey's Peak dominated the skyline. As this region of Northern Arizona is still considered to be a hot bed of volcanic activity, I should mention that Humphrey's Peak in the San Francisco Peaks range was at one time part of an even bigger mountain. In fact at one time all of the San Francisco Peaks were one large volcano, more than 16,000 feet high. When this volcano blew its top, the surrounding region and its vegetation were forever changed. As more volcanoes formed and erupted over the years, the climate of the region continued to change. Today it is possible to hike into the caldera of that old volcano, in the very center of the San Francisco Peaks range.


Here are the San Francisco Peaks:
This picture was taken last week as we drove to Flagstaff on I-40.


The house we moved into is very beautiful and inexpensive for the neighborhood. Here are some photos of the house. We just had the couch delivered yesterday.
This is a view of the office with my desk. Rachel is hiding behind the door working on a blog.

This is the couch that we bought Thursday at the Furniture Barn in downtown Flagstaff. There was a giant cow painted on the barn, Rachel saw that as a sign so we went in looking for a good deal and were lucky enough to find one.

This is a picture of Rachel and our landlord, Fred. He is a real stickler for paying the rent on time and just to keep us on our toes, he will occasionally bite us on the ass. He really is sweet to do that for me.


And lastly, this is the kitchen table and chair set that we found at a thrift store on sale for $100. A very good deal since it is so beautiful and it has a nice design of wood blocks set into the top of the table.

Pipestone

On the second day of our trip home from Little Big Horn Battlefield, Rachel and I stopped at Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota. I have to admit that I really didn't know what to expect until we got there. The monument preserves and interprets a centuries old Catlinite quarry. From this one quarry came the stone used to carve most of the calumet bowls after 900 A.D. Also known as peace pipes by Euro-Americans because Native Americans were seen using them at so many of the treaty counsels.

In 1836 the famous western artist George Catlin made a journey to the pipestone quarries where he witnessed a group of Santee Sioux excavating the soft rock and carving pipe bowls for use in religious ceremonies. During his visit, the Santee told Catlin of the myth behind the use of pipestone:

At an ancient time the Great Spirit, in the form of a large bird, stood upon the wall of rock and called all the tribes around him, and breaking out a piece of the red stone formed it into a pipe and smoked it, the smoke rolling over the whole multitude. He then told his red children that this red stone was their flesh, that they were made from it, that they must all smoke to him through it, that they must use it for nothing but pipes: and as it belonged alike to all the tribes, the ground was sacred, and no weapons must be used or brought upon it.


In this image you can see the rock wall in the background, where a park trail now takes you past Lake Hiawatha and Pipestone Creek. Natives still quarry Pipestone from the site during late summer and early fall and some of these individuals are employed as artisans at the park, working the Pipestone into effigy shapes and pipes and selling them to the public. Rachel bought a Pipestone effigy of a bear and I bought a small turtle for my little sister. I also bought a calumet, a very beautiful piece of native handicraft. The selling point for me was the beadwork on the pipe stem, it was done in blue and orange, two of my favorite colors.

Here is another angle of the same pipe:



All in all this was a very productive day. We were able to see much more of rural Southwest Minnesota and Northern Iowa, and we really believe that Iowa is a beautiful state, nothing but farms and the occasional large town.

Here are some more pictures of our visit to Pipestone National Monument. The first one is a picture from the trail as you head to the first quarry location.


This next image is of the first quarry you pass on the way to the rock wall where the Great Spirit was believed to have given his instructions on the use of Pipestone to Native Americans. This is an active quarry site.
As the trail passes Lake Hiawatha and winds toward the rock wall, the image of an old Indian face emerges for hikers to see.

Leaping Rock received its name from local Indian tribes because of the attempts of young men to prove their bravery by leaping across to the rock and placing an arrow into a crack that can still be seen on it today. By the way, this picture is deceiving. Leaping rock is a good 6 feet away from the rest of the rock wall. The actual area for a person to land on if they were so inclined to leap across this chasm (a good 30 foot drop off to jagged rocks below awaits the clumsy) is about four and a half feet in diameter. You can see for yourself in the picture below how difficult it would be to land on top of Leaping Rock.
One thing that is noticeable at this site is the large amount of hundred year old graffiti. At what point do graffiti artists receive recognition for their contribution to the history of an area? Apparently, according to the Park Service at Pipestone NM, if settlers on their way through this part of Minnesota left markings on the rocks, they are today historically valuable. If you were to do the same thing today, though they would arrest you. There is a sign that says all of this next to the smattering of graffiti. There was a lot more graffiti than this.
Here are the rest of the pictures, no need for explanations, just beautiful scenery I thought I would share with everyone.

After we left Pipestone NM, Rachel and I drove to Waterloo, Iowa and spent the night there. The next day we went to Harper's Ferry, Iowa and visited Effigy Mounds NM. I will post a blog on our visit to that site soon as well as some pictures.