Walnut Canyon National Monument

As I wrote in a previous entry here, 17 hour hike in the wet hiking shoes made my left foot hurt. My left foot is slightly bigger than right foot. If I buy a pair of shoes, always left foot feel small, but right foot is perfect. In general, hiking makes feet swollen. If 17 hours in a shoe with swollen foot? Not good. In this trip, it got worse because the shoes were wet. 

Due to this, we changed our plan and decided to do short hikes for a couple of days. Originally we were thinking about Subway in Zion, but we instead went to a couple of more National Monuments. Actually I didn't know there are many National Monuments in Utah and Arizona.

A day after we hiked Natural Bridges National Monument, we went to Walnut Canyon National Monument. 

Cliff dwelling

About 900 years ago, in the Walnut Canyon, cliff dwelling started being built. In this canyon, so many dwelling can be seen. In the left picture, you can see some dwelling. It is amazing that they built home literally in the middle of canyon!

People who lived there are not known where they were from, but it is known that most likely plenty of plants and animal in the area attracted them. They hunted and gathered plants, as well as farmed. 

Their home

The main trail is the Island trail, which is a 0.9 mile loop trail. You can walk along the many of dwellings. There are a lot of signage and explanation of culture. It was fun learning their lives in the past. 

Their dwelling is cool. As you can see in the left picture, they were built by utilizing cliff structure. Walls are with stones and clay. Archeologists think the home was built by women. I wonder what the evidence is coming from, though. They took DNA from wall and it was always XX chromosome or something?

door and hole for smoke

The left picture is interesting. The entry door and a hole for the smoke. They used fire inside, so the smoke needs to be go outside. The top small hole is the one. You notice that the top of the entry door has log.
You can see the door top portion picture in the right picture. 

door top

in the bottom picture, you can see how the trail is next to the dwelling. It is fun, right?!

dwelling

One of the signs along the trail explained that people shout each other to the other side of house in the canyon, and also communicated with torch. Very interesting. 

People occupied these for 100 years, then they left. Why did they leave? No clue. It is considered that these people were assimilated into Hopi culture. 

In 1880s, this became a popular place for souvenir hunters and a lot of stuff was destroyed. Then 1915, to protect this area, this became National Monument. 

It was a nice little walk to explore here.

Natural Bridges National Monument

I loved Natural Bridges National Monument so much!

Until we planned 2021 winter camping trip, I had never heard of Natural Bridges National Monument. I first choose Kane Gulch/Bullet canyon backpacking (wrote about in a previous entry), then I found there is Natural Bridges National Monument nearby on the map. I wondered, "Oh, what's this?" Because I love natural bridges, I looked up and found there are three bridges there. Why not checking them out if we were going to be close by!?

Natural bridges are made by running water force. Thus you would find stream or river under bridge or nearby, although not always water in the stream in the desert. On the other hand, arches are made by not the erosion of moving water, but by other forces. 

Owachomo bridge

By erosion state, bridges can be categorized young, middle, or old. In the Natural Bridges National Monument, there are three different age's bridges. 

Owachomo bridge is an old one and no longer erode by moving water, but now by others like frost. As you can see in the picture above, Owachomo bridge is very thin! It is no surprise it get collapsed tomorrow. However it could stand for 300 years more. 

Owachomo bridge is very distinctive, big bridge. It was really exciting to see it in person. The photograph gives you a sense how massive it is. When you are close, you will feel that sense 10 times more. It was super lucky to have the view only for us. From the side I was taking above picture, maybe it looks not too thin, however, now look at the below picture. This picture was taken from the other side from above. It looks really thin and I was convinced that it could fall this moment.

Owachomo bridge

 

Kachina bridge

Now the opposite: young bridge, which is Kachina bridge. As you can see in the left, it is very thick. It was very thick so I didn't even notice for minutes that there was a bridge ahead when I was walking on a dry creek. You see stream (although it is dry currently) is under the bridge. We sat there in the sun under Kachina bridge and had chocolate. What a luxury spot to eat chocolate. Extra happy.

Kachina bridge

It was hard to get the image to show how thick and immense Kachina bridge is. The left picture might tell you that feeling. 

It was good to see nice blue sky from both side of bridge!

Sipapu bridge

Sipapu bridge is the middle one. This is handsome and photogenic. Span is the biggest among the three. Close to the point I took the picture above, there was a ruin under alcove. Nice to live with this view, although I am sure the weather was tough at times. 

rock art

In this monument, you can hike all the three bridges in a loop (8 miles). Also you can see (look down bridges from above) them from overlook point on the scenic drive loop road. If you don't have time to hike, it is worth driving around. 

 

 

Nice view

Another option is hike 1 mile to the each bridge from road. We hiked (you can imagine?) 8 miles and saw many more that can't be seen from road. For example, these rock art. Hand stamps and maybe animal.

Hiking between those three bridges are in the canyon. It is quite a dramatic view. Some pictures in the left. Interesting rocks and good winding canyons. I can understand why these bridges were created by moving water force. 

Between bridges are canyon

It was really nice to be out there. Recommended destination for all fellow hikers!