Usery Mountain Regional Park, Arizona: Camping With The Snakes & Scorpions

Before we left Camp Verde this morning we drove over to Montezuma's Castle, which is a Federal Monument. Once again our $80 National Park Annual Pass let the four of us in without additional charge. Saved another $20 on this trip. That's over $100 dollars in savings on this trip. Wow - what a bargain if you are traveling and planning to visit just a few national parks and/or monuments.

Montezuma's Castle was originally thought by early settlers to be of Aztec origins, hence the name Montezuma's Castle. Even though it was soon proven that the Aztec's had nothing to do with it's construction, the name stuck.

Today it's a very well preserved example of the cliff dwellings built by the Sinagua. It's essentially a 20 room, four level apartment building that was built in stages. Built high on a south facing cliff, under a large under hang, it could only be entered via a series of ladders. These ladders could be quickly pulled up into the dwelling for protection.

The Sinagua were a farming based culture, using water from nearby Beaver Creek to irrigate their crops on small patches of level land. There were several of these buildings in the area. One of them was about 300 yards further west along the cliff however it was destroyed by fire right around the time the Sinagua abandoned the area around 1500 AD.

No one is sure why they left: Drought? Disease? Enemies? We'll never know for sure. What we are sure of is these people were skilled builders and farmers who clearly planned to be here for a long time to come and built the dwellings accordingly.

All in all, very cool.

After exploring Montezuma's Castle we headed south to Phoenix and, 2.5 hours later, arrived at Usery Mountain Regional Park. This is a county camping facility with the campsites spread throughout a high mountain desert location. We have water and electric however there is no septic so we'll have to move the RV every 3-4 days and dump the gray & black tanks. Small price to pay for such a beautiful location.



It's about 30 miles from downtown Phoenix and Sky Harbor Airport. Late tomorrow evening the girls leave to go back to Maryland. It has been so much fun having them with us for the last week. We have seen and done so much, laughing our way across many of Arizona's best known sights.

Can't tell you how much we will miss them...



Tomorrow we plan to go Indoor Sky Diving. Hopefully we can get in a few 'jumps'.

See Ya!