Cliff Dwellings

I make lots of mistakes when I write but this word processor isn’t helping any. Now it has removed all my spacing and clumped everything into one paragraph. Even if my spacing is wrong I’m against having the computer change it.

I’ve put 100 miles on the motorcycle already. Roosevelt Lake is long, and I have been to both ends today. I started out in Tonto National Monument where the park service keeps safe the remains of an old cliff dwelling. Looking back at how these people lived and survived gives me a balance when I think of how we live today. Most of the early inhabitants were lucky to live forty years.

The climb up to the site was harder than I thought it should be; maybe I’ve lost some of my conditioning. I was thankful for information plaques along the way where I could rest a few minutes.

When I returned to the Visitor Center I asked the Ranger if there were other cliff dwelling sites in the area, “Oh, there are hundreds of old ruins all over the area.”
“Are any of them open to the public?” I asked.
“They are all open to the public. You can go anyplace on Federal Forest Land. I just can’t tell you where they are.” She smiled.

She did give me a couple of places to look for dwellings down by the Salt River but I drove to both of them and never found anything. She said there were signs but I think they have been taken down for the season.

Tomorrow I will move on to the northeast. I must have a migrational indicator built in – it’s the direction I walked for 6mo.

2 Responses to “Cliff Dwellings”

  1. Dick says:

    I’m glad you found the hike to the cliff dwellings a bit difficult. I found it was too, but I figured you would probably run up the trail since you weren’t wearing a pack. 🙂

  2. Daryl says:

    Watch out for the winter storm moving into the state starting tomorrow night. The north east will get cold and may see snow.

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