Sailing, sailing,: Lake Mead, Red Rock and Montezuma's Castle State Parks

Monday, April 05, 2021

Lake Mead, Red Rock and Montezuma's Castle State Parks

It was our first call to 911 and my voice was shaky as I gave the details to the operator. We spent one night at Callville Campground in Lake Mead State Park, Nevada after leaving Las Vegas and were now on our way to Prescott Valley, Arizona. We took the scenic route and in the middle of nowhere on a 2 lane road, we came upon a truck off the road on the opposite side and on fire. Flames extended along the highway about 100 feet behind him. The driver stood beside the truck looking dazed. Another car had stopped to give assistance but we were the first ones to report the accident. After taking down all the details, the operator transferred us to the fire department for another grilling. Not long after we saw a fire truck and ambulance headed that way. Scott thinks he fell asleep and went off the road, the bottom of the truck brushing the dry low bushes ignited them. Luckily it was a diesel so it didn't explode!

A distant view back to Lake Mead while on the road to Arizona.

We really didn't intend to take the scenic route but while on the shortest Google direction, the annoying woman who directs us every day told us to take the next exit. Scott did check the navigation again and it agreed. We have no idea why since she told us to turn around 4 times over the next half hour as "we found a shorter route". The scenery, however, was nice and the interstate is boring so we continued on. It turned out to be much longer than we expected as the many back roads took us up and down through high mountain passes - beautiful though! We were on our way to visit Marsha Stone and Rick Greene, our cruiser friends from Tortugal Marina in Guatemala that we saw earlier at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along with Dave and Ellen Bett. All six of us were to be together again for several days, this time at the former's home in Prescott Valley, Arizona.

Driving around the mountains in Arizona is fun and very scenic. There aren't many spots to pull over to take photos, however.

We enjoyed two dinners at Marsha & Rick's and one out at Murphy's Restaurant in Prescott. One day Dave, Ellen, and ourselves visited both Sedona, Red Rock State Park, and Montezuma's Castle. The road from Prescott Valley took us over a very high pass and through Jasper. We had hoped to stop there to look around, but the town hangs on the side of the mountain and has very little parking. We couldn't find a spot. Sedona and Red Rock, a 286-acre nature preserve, have some spectacular scenery. We hiked across Oak Creek and did the Apache Fire Loop. The photos here don't do the scenery justice!

A view from the Apache Fire trail at Red Rock State Park

After a great lunch in Sedona, we moved on to Montezuma's Castle National Monument. This park, established in 1906, protects a set of well-preserved dwellings where the Sinagua people, a pre-Columbian culture closely related to the Hohokam and other indigenous peoples of the southwestern US dwelled between 1100 and 1420 AD. Montezuma had nothing to do with this structure and of course, it isn't a castle, but more of a high-rise apartment complex!

A distant view of the largest of the dwellings at Montezuma's Castle. The largest one visible here housed between 30 and 50 people but there were other groups living in smaller caves all along the cliff and possibly another large one that has been destroyed.

We left our trailer at Marsha and Rick's while we drove up to the Grand Canyon National Park for two days. We couldn't get a reservation for our trailer so instead stayed at the Red Feather Inn just outside the park. More on that in my next post.