Yesterday we spent the day on Perry Mesa which is about 40 miles south of Cottonwood. The mesa top is home to seven clusters of ancient ruins dating to the 13th and 14th centuries.

From: Perry Mesa: A Visitors Guide 

by Scott Wood, Tonto National Forest 1999

(remember you can click on the image to enlarge it)

We visited there earlier during this year's stay and wanted to return to check out some more of the ruins. We decided to head for the Squaw Creek Ruin which is a remote and unusual ruin near the south end of the road (FR 14, the term "road" us used very generously here). It took us an hour to drive the 8 miles in from Bloody Basin Road (which itself is very rough, steep, and washboardy).

Squaw Creek Ruin is built on the edge of the mesa-top cliff and has a commanding view to the south and east.

One of the unusual aspects of the ruin is the large enclosed plaza.

Reference is the same as above.

North side perimeter wall.

Unlike many of the ruins that we have visited, most of the walls are only partially collapsed and the rooms can be very easily seen.

Part of the plaza around the rooms contains many very large boulders and exposed outcrops, some of which were used as bedrock metates to grind corn and other grains (like amaranth).

Bedrock metate.

But much of the plaza is free of boulders so could have been used for numerous social activities (like a safe place for the kids to play away from the 1000' cliff along the south and east sides).

We ventured a little down the cliff on the south side and saw some of the petroglyph panels shown on the map above. We took photos from a safe distance because there is no way to access some of them (hard to say how the original artists actually got to the rock face to peck the images).

(Trust us - there are many petroglyphs in the two images

above but you will probably have to enlarge the images

 to see them).

Adjacent to the enclosure wall is a "racetrack." Archaeologists don't know what they were used for but many of the ruin clusters on the mesa top have them. They are 100+ yards long and straight and level. They are not roadways because they don't head anywhere. Some suggestions are that they were for formal processions, or perhaps for athletic events (sprints). They are hard to see from ground level but from the air they are visible.

It was interesting that we drove bouncing over boulders for an hour and there were two other groups visiting the ruin.

We chatted with one group of four: the younger couple were both archaeology majors in college and like many archaeologists became very proficient in GIS (geographic information systems) which is what they are both employed doing now, just not in archaeology. But archaeology is their passion so they keep involved on the weekends. The older couple with them were her father and his "girlfriend" visiting from Buffalo NY.

On Saturday we hiked up onto the ruins above our trailer to check out an area we hadn't examined before. The collapsed walls of the pueblo extend much farther down the west slope of the hilltop than we had previously realized.

And as we hiked up the west hillside we realized that the scatter of broken pottery is denser there than any other place we have observed. We did see several more examples of the rare types of decorated pottery - next week after we leave Cottonwood we will spend a few days in Flagstaff, the home of the Museum of Northern Arizona and the primary research center for this whole area. We hope to learn more about all the pottery and collapsed walls when we visit the museum.

On Friday we went back to Dead Horse Ranch State Park just to take a nice long walk on beautifully groomed trails around several lagoons and marshes.

But into the walk we decided to head off the main trails and walk to the Verde River, which is the southern border of the park. What we discovered is that the stretch of river in our RV park is much nicer and more accessible than in the state park. Perhaps another reason we like our quirky little destination here in Cottonwood.

We visited the State Park earlier in our trip this year but then there were no leaves on the trees. Now all the trees are green and the scenery is beautiful.

Other things that we have been doing over the last several days include finally replacing the part of our water filter system that blew up and flooded our trailer when we were in Kanab on our way down here - plus a few other minor repairs and adjustments.

We only have one week left until we start heading back to Idaho but we will take several weeks making the trip. It is hard to believe we will have been here for a month and a half - time does fly when we're having fun (and relaxing a lot).