Flagstaff, Arizona
Walnut Canyon National Monument
Lowell Observatory
Thorpe Park
Weather: low 80’s day; 40’s night
Because we entered into Pacific Time Zone last night, our
bodies are still on the Mountain Time Zone, and so we were early to bed last
night and relatively early to rise, which was a good thing for getting moving!
We had an elaborate breakfast with pancakes, fresh cantaloupe, strawberries and
raspberries (thanks to our recent trip to the grocery store!). After cleaning
up and making lunches, we were on our way.
Our first stop was Walnut Canyon- about 7 miles east of
Flagstaff. It was kind of nice to be camped close to the attractions-driving
where we needed to go today only took minutes instead of a half hour or more.
Walnut Canyon is a site where they have preserved or restored the cliff
dwellings of the Anasazi or Sinagua Pueblo peoples of the early 2nd
century. There is pretty much only one thing to do at the park, but that was
fine-we wanted low-key today! We walked down the 240 steps about 600 feet into
the canyon that circled the “island” of the cliff dwellers. We walked along a
trail that passed about 25 different cliff dwellings. The dwellings were in the
area of the layers of rock just below the limestone layer, where weathering
naturally eroded the softer soils and sandstone to create overhangs. The people
of that time created an entire community of dwellings in these cliffs (as I’m
sure they did elsewhere in different parts of the country). Although looters
and tourists of the early 1800’s destroyed much of the dwellings in search of
artifacts, much of it has been restored to its supposed original condition.
What was interesting to see, and what was certainly original, was the creosote
and black marks on the inside ceilings of the rooms where obviously fires were
built. We explored the dwellings and then walked the 240 steps back up to the
top of the cliff.
After leaving the cliffs, we headed into the downtown
historic Rt. 66 district of Flagstaff. The boys needed to pick up a part for
their mountain bikes at a bike shop, so we did that and then looked in a couple
of shops before heading over to the Lowell Observatory to catch the noon
sun-viewing.
A little history on the Lowell observatory: the Lowell
Observatory is where Percival Lowell, an astronomer in the late 1800’s,
discovered the 9th planet, Pluto. Today the original telescope used
by Lowell, as well as other telescopes at the observatory are used for
educational purposes as well as ongoing research. We were able to make it in
time for the viewing of the sun shortly after noon, where they had a special
“shielded” telescope set up. Not knowing exactly what to expect when we looked
through, we saw the red orb of the sun of course! On the sun’s surface we could
see a couple of dark spots-these are areas where we can see through the sun’s
atmosphere to its surface. We also saw a solar flare-evidently the sun has been
very active lately as far as solar flares. We learned that the sun is not
actually a burning ball of fire-fire cannot exist in space because there is no
oxygen. Instead, it is a ball of plasma-burning hydrogen and helium mostly. We
left the observatory, with the intent to come back close to dark to participate
in some of the nighttime viewing opportunities.
Just down the hill from the observatory was a park (Thorpe
Park) that Dennis looked up and found had a Frisbee golf course. We considered
checking here because Flagstaff is a college town-Northern Arizona University
Lumberjacks-and like all good college towns, they play disc golf! Indeed, when
we got to the tee off for the first hole, we met a college student who was
there as part of a college class-Frisbee Golf 101! We played most of the
course-Dennis, Eric and I (and Leah for part of the time). Bay just walked along
with us. The course was okay-it wandered through tall ponderosa pines, but the
ground was all volcanic rock, littered with broken glass bottles the entire
time. After the course, we gave Bay and Leah some time to play at the
playground.
We came back to the RV to make an early dinner so we could
get over to the Lowell Observatory around 6:30-it gets dark here about 7:00! We
have been so many places that do not permit campfires-I’ve talked about that
before, but most allow cooking over a charcoal grill. However, most do not
provide a grill; so we picked up a tabletop charcoal grill at Wal-mart the
other night (we have seen LOTS of people using them) so that we could do some
cooking out! Many of my meals planned for this trip involved cooking out, and it
has been very hard to not be able to do that. Tonight we cooked steaks and had
a great salad to go with them. Mmmmmm, the flavor imparted by a charcoal grill
can’t be beat! The little grill we got only used a very small bit of charcoal,
so it will be much more efficient than those normal ones you see at picnic
areas-for just our family, it is perfect! Wish we had gotten it sooner, but I’m
sure it will get plenty of use in the future!
After dinner, we headed up to the observatory. They have a
path lined out which is called the “Pluto Walk” where they have sign-posts for
each planet in our solar system, showing the relative distance between the
planets. The scale was 1 inch=1 million miles. Quite the visual-it was very
helpful to understand the proximity of the planets to each other as well as the
sun. Once it got dark, they had telescopes set up outside through which we
could view the moon, and also certain stars. We looked first at Polaris (the
North Star) and then they had a computer
screen hooked up to a telescope that was looking at the Barbell Nebula-you
could actually see a star that was expanding and the colors coming off of it.
Very cool. Lastly, we were able to go up to the Clark Telescope, the original
one that Percival Lowell had built for him there on Mars Hill, and look through
it. It is one of those huge telescopes, where they open the doors of the
observatory for the telescope to protrude through. We looked at a system of
stars-called M16-a globular cluster of stars in the Pegasus constellation. You
actually cannot see the cluster of stars with the naked eye-but we could see
it-thousands of stars all clumped together-through the telescope. All of the
people who worked there were so informative and answered so many of our
questions! One of the men had a model of our galaxy-the Milky Way-a giant foam
spiral. He showed us where we are in the galaxy (on the outside edge of a
spiral) and that when we look up at the stars at night and see the milky band
of stars across the sky, in the summer, we are looking into the center of the
galaxy, but in the winter, we are looking outward to the edge. Again-super
interesting. Also, to illustrate how
wide and far-reaching the size of our galaxy is, he told Bay that if someone
were to stand on one edge of the galaxy and shine a light, it would take 1,000
years for another person standing on the other edge of the galaxy to see that
light. Additionally, we looked at a computer model of a series of pictures
taken over the past 10 years of the path a group of stars had been traveling in
the center of the Milky Way. The model showed that the stars are all revolving
around something (kind of like our planets revolve around the sun) but that
something is not able to be seen because it is a black hole, at the center of
our galaxy.
It was a different kind of day today than we have been
having the past couple of weeks-kind of toned down and much more relaxing, but
it was nice to do some different types of activities.
Walnut Canyon-cliff dwellings across from us-they were everywhere in the canyon-only a small portion were open for our viewing!
Eric inside one of the rooms-most of the mortar between the rocks is restoration work after the looters of the 1800's, but the ceilings are 100% authentic!
Dennis and the little ones at the Cliff Dwellings
some of the steps leading down into the canyon. we walked down from the rim, only about 1/4 of the way to the bottom of the canyon. the cliff dwellings were built in a layer of limestone. at the bottom of the canyon used to be a river, but since the Colorado was dammed up, that river dried up
Heather and Leah at Walnut Canyon
the meteorite from Meteor Crater, also near Flagtaff, is on display at Lowell Observatory, it is almost 100% lead, and weighs over 500 pounds!
Dennis firing up the new tabletop charcoal grill!
looking at the moon in the early evening at Lowell Observatory. they had to constantly reposition this telescope as the moon moved across the sky. this is a 16" lens-the detail was amazing. Dennis was able to capture a bit of it on his phone camera below
Bay looking at the original images that helped Percival Lowell discover Pluto
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