Monday, October 4, 2010
Fort Tuthill County Park, Flagstaff, AZ - May 8-14
This is a nice wooded county park 3 miles south of Flagstaff that has water & sewer hookups but no electricity. We decided it was the perfect place to test our new solar setup. However, you may have noted the word "wooded" in the above description! With much inspection we were finally able to select a site that had about half a day of good sun. 
Even with that, we were able to use our solar power for several hours of TV/VCR, computing, lights, etc with no problems. This was also a convenient location for seeing many of the attractions around Flagstaff. We had been here before in 10/99 but were chased out by a snowstorm before we had done our sightseeing. This time was unusually warm, so that was not a problem.
We went to Wupatki and Sunset Crater NM, hiking out to all the ruins and up to the top of a the Lenox cinder cone. While there we saw our first Wilson's Warbler. We also went to Walnut Canyon NM, where we saw MacGillivray's Warbler. Both Wupatki & Walnut Canyon were once home to the Sinagua (Spanish for "without water"), named for their ability to turn a dry region into a homeland. 
The two areas are quite different in appearance, and both are lovely. Another Sinagua area that we visited briefly was Elden Pueblo, north of Flagstaff, which is currently open to the public for archaeology activities, although none were occurring when we visited. 
We later visited the Museum of Northern Arizona, which has exhibits on the people & history of the Colorado Plateau. We went on a birding walk at the Flagstaff Arboretum, where we saw Western Bluebird, Brewer's Blackbird, Red Crossbill, Brewer's Sparrow and Black-headed Grosbeak.# posted by Doug and Willie @ 9:51 PM 
