December 2011: I often forget that Arizona has weather. I scoffed when my mom offered me gloves for a brief weekend trip up to Sedona and Jerome. I headed north, blithely unconcerned with all those ominous clouds because it's Arizona: it's not like they could hold precipitation or anything.
First stop: Montezuma's Castle.
The park includes a diorama of the castle with this amusing detail of a mom yelling at her kid running too close to the edge.
The castle was surrounded by beautiful Arizona sycamores (Platanus wrightii); their deep rose-orange foliage complementing the lighter rose-orange of the canyon walls. The wood of the sycamore is very sturdy and some beams made from the wood still support ceilings in the castle 700 years later.
The bark of the sycamore is beautiful, too.
Western Soapberry (Sapindus drummondii). The berries are poisonous, but were used as a detergent by native peoples and in Mexico to this day. They are also used for fishing - the berries stun fish so they can be caught. I find this plant very 80's looking somehow.
Net-leaf Hackberry plant (Celtis reticulata). The berries from this plant were "relished" by native people, who pounded the berries into a pulp and mixed them with fat or parched corn. This isn't the berry, though, but an insect gall. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall)
Saltbush (Atriplex canescens). I'd recently seen a display on piki bread at Phoenix's Heard Museum. This bread was made with culinary ash, and I read in one of the interpretive displays at the castle that this plant was used for said culinary ash. Plant-learnin' synergy! In baking, it was also used as a substitute for baking powder. The plant was used for other stuff, too: leaves and shoots were added to soups and stews, seeds were ground into meal, blossoms and twigs were made into a yellow dye, the root was chewed for relief for bee and ant stings, and the fruits were eaten as well.
Those dark clouds I'd ignored had been raining on me at Montezuma's Castle, but as I drove onward to Sedona, it turned to snow. Oops.
The weather made the red rocks significantly less so.
Although if you got close up, you could still see it.
I think this is Silverleaf nightshade (Solanum elaeagnifolium).
Then up to Jerome to stay at the Jerome Grand Hotel.
The hotel is the large building up the hill.
The Hotel is supposed to be haunted. Ergo this decor.
A steady decline in hotel amenities on this particular year's trip to the Southwest. Benbow Inn in the Redwoods had had free sherry. The Bakersfield Doubletree gave us the obligatory Doubletree fresh-baked cookies. The Jerome Grand Hotel had two in-room pixy sticks. They apparently have a broad definition of the word "grand."
Jerome night view
Fall color in Clarkdale the next day.
Tuzigoot National Monument. "Tuzigoot is an ancient village or pueblo built by a culture known as the Sinagua. The pueblo consisted of 110 rooms including second and third story structures. The first buildings were built around A.D. 1000. The Sinagua were agriculturalists with trade connections that spanned hundreds of miles. The people left the area around 1400."
Foodzigoot. In more happy synchroncity, two of the foods featured in a small ethnobotany display at Tuzigoot at the monument were concurrent chapters in the Sonoran food book I was reading, Gathering the Desert. I was in the midst of reading about amaranth (left) (this version is the red dye amaranth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth#Dyes) and the very next chapter was tepary beans.
Winterfat (Eurotia lanata). Sheep can be fattened on this in winter, hence the name. The powdered roots can be used as a poultice. Leaves were parboiled to heal ulcers. It was also used to heal ulcers and on hot rocks in sweatlodges for aroma.
Arizona cypress (Cupressus arizonica)
Metate in the ruins
View from inside Tuzigoot
Leaving Tuzigoot, a drive through old town Cottonwood
A quick drive through Oak Creek up towards Flagstaff. Oak Creek is one of my favorite places on earth. Unfortunately, with the snow, a lot of the little place to stop along the creek were closed.
Back down to Sedona, for some final red rock views...