Walnut Canyon

Walnut Canyon is a canyon about seven miles east of Flagstaff, AZ and the featured attraction of its namesake national monument.  As far as I can tell, there's no river or creek flowing through its bottom.  Maybe it gets some water if a rainfall produces a flash flood.  From the visitor center, the Island Trail leads down to and around a raised rock formation on the north side of the canyon, on which people of the Sinagua Culture built cliff dwellings.  As you walk down, you get to see views like this, looking west.

Here's the view in another direction, again seen from the stairs leading from the visitor center down to the loop which forms the main part of the Island Trail.

I took one more of the south side of the canyon before reaching the cliff dwellings.

Here's the first cliff dwelling that I saw.  The Sinagua used stones and mortar to build walls that reached up to overhanging rock.

Most of the walls of this next dwelling don't reach the natural roof.

This next area appears to have included three rooms.

As I kept walking around the Island Trail, I came across these dwellings, whose outer walls were mostly still intact.  The walkway to the left is part of the trail, and thus a modern addition.

There was another set of cliff dwellings, and some huge boulders, on the other side of the canyon.

After taking the last shot above, it was time for what I like to call "the fun part".  The trail included 273 steps down from the visitor center, which meant that I now faced 273 steps up to the visitor center.  After some slow and steady climbing and a couple of rests on conveniently placed benches, I was soon back on top.  As it turned out, there were still some more things to see.  A walk of about 100 yards from the parking lot leads to some pueblo structures, such as this one.

The remains of another pueblo building are below a protective cover.  Whatever you do, don't step down into it.

To learn more about Walnut Canyon, besides the link above, go to Visit Arizona, American Southwest Virtual Museum, Flagstaff(dot)com, Discover Flagstaff and Western National Parks Association.