Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Homolovi Ruins State Park, Winslow, AZ - May 21-27
We picked this park as a good place to "hide out" for the holiday weekend plus visit the old ruins. We were, as usual, taken by surprise at the large number of interesting things to see in the area. Within the park are several old pueblos, which are mainly unexcavated. All you see are a few remains of walls, LOTS of broken pottery, and many petroglyphs. It is a lovely campground, with large spaces, and it was never over half full even on the holiday weekend. There wasn't much opportunity for birding, but we did see our first Cassin's Kingbird and Horned Lark.
History in the Winslow area goes WAY back. The first wagon roads came through in the 1870s. Mormon settlers founded several communities in the early 1880s, with Winslow being founded in 1880. It was along the historic route of the Santa Fe Railway and has a great old Harvey House designed by Mary Coulter in the early 1900s (before women could even vote!), La Posada Hotel. 
The hotel has been restored and is open for business, including a gourmet restaurant with wonderful food and a Howard Hughes suite. Winslow was located on historic Route 66, and has lots of shops and memorabilia on this theme. 
Winslow was also a stop on the first transcontinental air/rail route (slogan: "NYC to LA in UNDER 48 hours!"), and the airport is still big enough for larger planes. With the advent of I-40 in the 60s, Winslow was bypassed, and somewhat forgotten.
The Eagles song "Take It Easy", popular in the 1970s, had a verse about "standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...", and that still draws visitors to stand on the famous corner. It is memorialized by a small park with a life-sized bronze statue of a guitar player and a mural of the woman driving by in her flatbed Ford. The Old Trails Museum, often referred to as "Winslow's Attic", houses interesting exhibits of the various stages in Winslow's history.
We visited the Little Painted Desert County park, about 13 miles north of the state park, for a lovely sunset view. The area has several nice little county parks, which unfortunately show the lack of money for such amenities in the county.
The absolute high point of our stay here was our visit to Rock Art Ranch, located outside of town about 25 miles. This is a privately owned working ranch, which contains a portion of Chevelon Canyon, home to one of the finest stands of Anasazi petroglyphs in the Southwest. While there we saw a small Anasazi, pioneer & cowboy museum -- all quite interesting. They have not dug for anything on the ranch but have just picked up things uncovered by the wind. They have many pottery items, most of them unbroken, from various time periods. On the way to the canyon, we saw a small group of buffalo (including one giving birth!),
remains of a Native American rock corral, house & hogan. The canyon itself is lovely in its own right, with lush vegetation and water flowing even during these dry times. The petroglyphs are probably the best we've ever seen -- they were everywhere you looked. I'm sure the owners find more every time they go down there.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 12:02 AM 
