Our first stop that morning would be the Walnut Canyon National Monument, in which we would find some very nice cliff dwellings along the Island Trail - a mile-long paved trail that entailed climbing down several flights of stairs to get to the ruins.  Once on the "island", we would actually get to hike into the ruins, rather than view them from a distance as we had to do in many of the other national parks.

To get to Walnut Canyon, we took I-17 north to Flagstaff, then took I-40 east to the Walnut Canyon exit.  The visitor center was located just a couple of miles off of the freeway.

After exploring the museum inside of the visitor's center for about a half an hour, John and Mary and I decided that it was time to go down to the ruins.  We descended the metal staircase inside of the visitor's center then went outside, where several more flights of stairs awaited us.  With each step that I took down, I could only groan, thinking that I would eventually have to come back up again...and that wasn't going to be easy at 7-1/2 months pregnant.

On the way down the stairs, we saw the most amazing sight: two deer, grazing on the side of the cliff.  As soon as we passed by them, they moved onto the stairs, not even caring that we were there, watching them and taking pictures of them.  They didn't seem to have any fear of us at all.

At the bottom of the stairs, we started hiking the very flat Island Trail, which circled around the ruins that had been built into the cliffs of a giant monolith in the canyon.  From the Island Trail, we could also see the cliff dwellings that were built into the walls of Walnut Canyon - although these were not accessible by trail, we were able to photograph them using our digital zoom.

Not all of the ruins along the Island Trail were well preserved; many of the walls had crumbled, leaving only 1-2 foot tall piles of rocks where walls had once stood.  The walls that were intact - the ones that still stood floor to ceiling - were only about six feet tall, with interior doorways in between rooms that were much smaller.

While we were hiking along the trail around the ruins, Mary decided to have a melt-down, because she just didn't want to hike anymore.  John had to carry her for a while just so that we could get moving again.

Mary did eventually forget her woes and started hiking again.  She became especially fascinated by the ruins, especially when she found that many of the doors were "Mary-sized".  We allowed her to enter a few of the ruins so that she could see what they were like on the inside.

"People used to live in these ruins," we explained to Mary.

"How did they live here?" she asked, curiously.  She was obviously awed by the thought that these were once houses, inhabited by an Ancient people.

We completed the loop around the ruins and soon began our climb back to the top of the stairs.  It wasn't as hard as I thought - in fact, I passed by several people on the way up, thinking, "Ha ha, you just got passed by a pregnant woman!"  Of course, once I reached the top, I was very much out of breath!

It was nearly lunchtime when we left Walnut Canyon; we stopped for lunch in Flagstaff, then we drove away to visit our next destination: Montezuma's Castle National Monument, near the town of Camp Verde.

Now, we had once tried to visit Montezuma's Castle, a couple of years ago during a camping trip near Camp Verde; however, Mary had fallen asleep in the Jeep and we didn't want to wake her.  This time, Mary was wide awake and ready for another adventure, so we decided to stay for a while.

We passed through the visitor's center, where we showed our park pass to the park ranger at the cash register and obtained yet another stamp for Mary's passport book.  Then, we went out the backdoor to begin our tour of the grounds.

There was a flat, paved trail that led from the visitor's center to the ruins of Montezuma's Castle, built high up on the sheer cliff walls.  The ruins are among the best preserved Ancient Indian ruins ever discovered; the walls are almost perfectly intact, unlike many of the other ruins we had seen throughout the years.  I'm sure that it has something to do with inaccessibility of the ruins to the general public.  I once heard that the park service allowed tours of the ruins many, many years ago but soon abandoned that practice in order to preserve the ruins in their pristine state.

We stayed at Montezuma's Castle just long enough to admire the ruins and to take pictures of them; then, John announced that it was time for us to go home.  Mary was getting restless and needed a nap, and there were things to do around the house.  So, we looped back around on the paved trail to the visitor's center and returned to the Jeep.

Our day's adventure was over...

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