While Sedona, famous for its dramatic red rocks and spiritual vortexes, was our base for the last leg of our trip, the string of national monuments we hit undoubtedly overshadowed it in appeal. As soon as we left the Grand Canyon, we started our monument circuit beginning with Walnut Canyon and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monuments. Located just half an hour from each other, these two spots felt worlds and eons apart.
Walnut Canyon is a 400-foot-deep, 20-mile-long gully that was home to a community of Ancestral Puebloans for about 125 years almost 1000 years ago. Although they departed mysteriously, they left behind 80 structures comprised of 300 rooms in the steep canyon walls. You can take a path halfway down the canyon and see these dwellings up close. The buildings in Walnut Canyon may not be as complex as those in places like Mesa Verde but being among them provides a greater connection to the past than just gazing from afar. This ravine radiates long memory, making it my favorite stop of our whole trip. One of the rangers mentioned that they’d had the option of changing the monument’s title to include “cliff dwellings” in its name, but their parking wasn’t adequate to accommodate the increase in visitors that would result. So, while “cliff dwellings” still isn’t on Walnut Canyon’s brochure, that’s exactly what it is.
Did you know that Northern Arizona’s San Francisco Volcanic Field has produced over 600 volcanoes? Sunset Crater Volcano, which is the youngest volcano in the field, erupted 900 years ago. It became a national monument back in 1930 thanks to activists petitioning for its permanent protection after a movie studio planned on blowing a significant portion of it away to simulate an avalanche in a film no one remembers now. President Hoover agreed that this cinder cone and its lava remnants should be preserved, and the monument was created. We checked out its brittle and contorted environment after Walnut Canyon and wandered the A’a, Lava Flow, Bonito Vista, and Lenox Crater Trails. No need to be impressed, completing all those treks required barely over three miles of hiking.
The next day, we headed south from Sedona on the Redrock Scenic Byway for, you guessed it, more national monuments. We explored Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well, which are technically both part of Montezuma Castle National Monument. In case you are wondering, the names are completely wrong since Montezuma hadn’t even lived yet when these villages were active, but that’s what you get when you let Europeans name somebody else’s stuff.
Montezuma Castle is a five-story structure built between 1100 and 1300 by Ancestral Puebloans. To preserve this cliff dwelling, tourists haven’t been allowed to walk through it since 1951, but that doesn’t keep the throngs from taking a look. For some reason, the short trail below this building was more congested than those at any of the other national monuments we visited on our trip.
Montezuma Well, while not as flashy as Montezuma Castle, had fewer guests and greater distinction. Montezuma Well is a mysterious desert spring that remains filled even during droughts and outputs 1.6 million gallons of water every day. Many Indigenous Tribes consider it sacred or even the site where human beings first emerged into this world. Its depth is unknown even after years of research as a baffling layer of fluidized sand 55 feet down obscures the bottom, which is at least another 65 feet deeper. Montezuma Well contains 80 times the levels of carbon dioxide normally found in water, making it uninhabitable to fish. What creatures might appreciate these strange and sour waters? Leeches, water scorpions, and amphipods mostly. Five species in its basin are found nowhere else on Earth.
For the last day of our vacation, Jason and I chose to break from our norm and do some hiking that didn’t involve a national monument. Many of Sedona’s most popular paths are so packed police must constantly enforce parking limits at their trailheads. And forget about finding a clear shot for a picture, you might have to throw a hiker or two off a ridge to get one. Therefore, we decided to enjoy the area’s famous red rock on a not-too-popular path. We did a five-mile loop in the Secret Mountain Wilderness that incorporated the Soldier Pass, Cibola Pass, and Brins Mesa Trails. We ran into quite a few people for a mile or so span of Soldier Pass but saw next to no one the rest of the time. Why so many in that section? The Devil’s Kitchen Sinkhole, the Seven Sacred Pools, and the Soldier Pass Cave/Arches were the reasons for that human excess. Did they warrant the crowds? Sort of.
The Devil’s Kitchen Sinkhole is rather cool. In the 1880s, a 200 sq. ft. underground cavern about 666 feet below the surface, which had formed from water slowly dissolving rock, collapsed and caused a cascade of disintegration all the way up to the surface. Since then, more stone chunks have fallen suddenly into this pit increasing its size by more than 40%. Today it is 150 x 92 feet wide and 40-60 feet deep, and it’s not done expanding. Scientists have been monitoring it for decades and have discovered that its cracks are getting longer and broader. It’s just a matter of time until the Devil remodels his kitchen and installs a doublewide oven, integrated range hood, and bay window.
The Seven Sacred Pools, the next attraction drawing the mobs, are a series of circular hollows carved out of sandstone by an intermittent stream. These were completely underwhelming. I still can’t fathom why they are so hyped up. Maybe they are more striking when the stream is flowing? It seems more likely that their recognition is a bit of Instagram trending gone awry.
The final curiosity bringing the masses to this trail was the Soldier Pass Cave/Arches. It is an opening in the rockface with a second level that includes an arch window. You can scramble up a short rocky incline and access the hidden ledges of its second story. Those ledges do have a substantial gap between them, so the top floor may not be ideal for the height concerned. Since this cavity is unusual, it’s probably worth a visit. However, we found it too packed to be thoroughly enjoyable.
Past the cave, we saw only a handful of people the rest of our miles back, which gave us plenty of opportunities to take in the scenery unhindered and bestow amazing names like The Devil’s Sock Puppet and Jabba the Rock on the strange stone formations we encountered.
What were our thoughts on Sedona? It is beautiful, but it’s certainly a victim of its own success. The traffic was horrible and constantly backed up. It was hard to find parking at the trailheads, and we didn’t even attempt to go to the most popular ones. I’d take somewhere slightly less scenic but also less peopled over Sedona anytime. Plus, I’d say it’s overrated. Moab easily has Sedona beat on both scale and quantity of the natural attractions in its proximity. We wouldn’t be opposed to stopping in Sedona again sometime, but I doubt we would pick it as our primary destination due to its busyness.
The Grand Canyon may have been our reason for traveling to Arizona, but, like Sedona, it probably won’t be what brings us back. Although we enjoyed every section of this trip, the secluded places and still moments were the highlights, along with the treehouse pie of course.