Snowbowl, Wupatki, Sunset Crater

I've shared some of these photos on Facebook already. These are actually from two separate trips up to that area.

First, I got Jeff out of town for a day trip to celebrate his birthday. We rode the chairlift at snowbowl and enjoyed some wonderful views.

It was freezing on top of the mountain.

We drove over to Sunset crater too. It is a pretty cool place. This is Apache Plume. It has regular white flowers first and then they turn into these plumes.

A different day, I finally went to Wupatki. There are several different ruins in the area. They are really cool! This is the Lomatke ruin. These were Hopi or Pueblo Indians.

You can see the ruin on top of the hill in the background. This one is called the Citadel. Then there is this smaller ruin in front.

There was an amazing storm going on around me with beautiful views of shadow and light, cliffs and mountains in the distance.

 The Wupatki ruin was amazing. It was huge. They say over 100 rooms. What I found really interesting about it, was that it was an intersection between various Indian groups and cultures. A place where they could come, trade and interact. There are references to Wupatki in wide ranging native American groups all over the state.

They had a ball court, which is a part of the pueblo cultures in New Mexico, not Arizona.

 And an Amphitheatre or maybe an extra large Kiva. I had never seen anything like it before.

This snake petroglyph was by the trail

 This is a different ruin a mile or so away.

 There was a beautiful double rainbow! I don't know if you can see the second one very well.

Back at Sunset crater area, looking towards the San Francisco Peaks.

 Amazing lava fields.

Sunset Crater

Lava and me

Near Sunset Point on the way home