Day 62 May 5

The view walking up to the ruins

Inside the reconstructed room,  they added two feet to the actual original height
 to make it more comfortable for us tourist.

Some of the 110 rooms. (notice that there are no doors)

 Today we went to Tuzigoot National Monument and Slide Rock State Park.Tuzigoot is an ancient village or pueblo built by a culture known as the Sinagua. The pueblo consisted of 110 rooms including second and third story structures. The first buildings were built around A.D. 1000. The Sinagua were agriculturalists with trade connections that spanned hundreds of miles. The people left the area around 1400. One portion of it has been reconstructed to show how they built the roof and used the buildings.  This is the first ruins that we went to that discussed the burial of the people that lived there.  Hundreds of graves of adults were found around the immediate area, they did not find graves of children until they excavated the floors of the buildings.  The children were buried in the floors of the homes.  Scientist believe they did this so the spirits of the children could still be protected by the families.  None of the graves are marked even though they know where they are to discourage looters and desecration of the graves. 














It was a hot day so we went to a natural water slide set in a valley nearby at Slide Rock State Park.  It was an old apple orchard, they could grow apples because of the shelter of the canyon and the year round water even though they are still in a desert.




In the evening we watched the Super Moon rise.  Which is a full moon when the moon is in the closest part of its orbit to earth.