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Wupatki


The ruins and ball court as seen from the short trail from the visitors center.

At long last, this is the final of my Arizona posts.  There was so much to see on our family vacation after teaching there…LOTS of fodder for quilts, quilting designs and color inspiration.  My husband loves to research things on the internet, plan vacations, and do all that sort of thing.  (I’m more the sort that would plan about half of it, get the hotel reservations, then rely on serendipity about where to go and what to do.)  Well, while waiting for Paul and the boys to arrive in Flagstaff, *I* got on the internet to see what was there to see (yes, late in the game I know).  I read about the Wupatki ruins, which are in the middle of a fairly large, empty space northwest of Flagstaff. Fortunately, they were near Sunset Crater which Paul wanted to see, so we were able to add this stop, which ended up being one of the highlights of the trip for me.

The view of the ruins as you walk from the visitors center; to the right are a ball court and another outdoor facility probably for games and rituals.

The National Park Service summarizes it this way:

Less than 800 years ago, Wupatki Pueblo was the largest pueblo around. It flourished for a time as a meeting place of different cultures. Yet this was one of the warmest and driest places on the Colorado Plateau, offering little obvious food, water, or comfort. How and why did people live here? The builders of Wupatki and nearby pueblos have moved on, but their legacy remains.

and:

The people who built Wupatki and other pueblos here were ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, and other puebloan peoples of today. Archeologists recognize different cultural traditions based on differences in pottery styles and architecture. According to these classifications, most of the monument’s sites are called Kayenta Ancestral Puebloan; others are Cohonina, and Sinagua. But these are modern terms.  We don’t know what people called themselves or how different groups related to each other.

The NPS website tells us that there was more water then than today, but it still sounds as though it was a challenging environment.  We were there in late April, and it was already hot and dry:

The landscape as seen from the back side of the ruins: wide open and arid.

It was absolutely fascinating to see there ruins…with only a little bit of modern reconstruction and re-inforcement.  Imagine….these buildings have been there fore EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS!  Europe was in the Dark Ages… Columbus hadn’t “discovered” the North American continent… WOW!

The boys wanted me to take a picture of the lizard:

Then more about the desert creatures:

On the path down there was a petroglyph, a carving of a snake in the red stone.

The buildings fascinated me, along with the shapes and patterns in the stone:

a closer view

Paul & Joshua on the near side...

Look at the quality of the stone cutting, wall construction, shapes... and then think about quilts and design...oooh!

3 Responses to “Wupatki”

  1. Judy Warner Says:

    So Arizona! I love those red rocks.

  2. Sally Says:

    Thank you so much for showing us your vacation/work photos. So interesting to read about all the sites from a quilter’s viewpoint. Would love to visit all the sites someday…

  3. Natalya Says:

    I’ve been there! so amazing isn’t it!