Marsh Walk, Old Cottonwood and Tuzigoot

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

 
Woke up this morning and the sky was partially overcast, so we decided not to drive to Sedona today and stick around here and see what there is in the Cottonwood area.  There is a lot to see right here as it turned out.  Dolly fixed a great breakfast and we laid around the motorhome and watched a little TV.

First thing I did after the sun warmed the area, was to wash a few of the windows in the motorhome so I can take pictures from inside if necessary.
 
At 1 pm, Fergie and I decided we would take a walk through the marshland just north of our site.
 
Heading down toward the marsh

Old log cabin on the trail.  Wonder who lived there? 
 
Fergie scouting ahead 
 
Marshland just ahead 

Wonder what those ruins are?
 
Old truck washed down a gulley

At the bottom


Marshland

After resting, I jumped into the jeep and went into Cottonwood looking for a fitting hat for Arizona.  Stopped at a Sporting Goods store, but they only had a few cowboy hats and they did not look right on me.  I have never been a hat person my whole life, so I knew it would be hard to find the perfect hat, because I didn’t know what the perfect hat would look like till I saw it.  A nice lady at the store directed me to the The Cowboy Shop, just down the road.  She thought they may have a variety of hats.

Jeeped down to The Cowboy Shop.  When I walked in I was greeted by this tall young “drip” of a lady in tight jeans.  She asked where I was from and she said she was from Michigan .  Greetings done, she commenced to walk me through their wide variety of cowboy hats and then she came to the Australian Outback line of hats.  My eyes lit up when I saw the dark brown Aussie hats with small rims and chincord to keep it from blowing away in the winds out here. 

I had found the perfect hat; an “Original Outback Oilskin” canvass Aussie hat made by the Outback Trading Company.  After dickering on the price, I paid full price and wore it proudly out of the store.  I feel like this hat is me!  I can’t believe I found my “perfect hat” so quickly.

The perfect hat

Drove back up Main street toward Old Cottonwood, stopped to take a few pictures and then went a couple miles further north to the old ruins that I had seen on my walk earlier this morning.  Discovered that the pictures I had taken from our park across the valley of the town on the side of the mountain was not Old Cottonwood as I said in my previous post, but is the old mining town of Jerome.

Old Cottonwood Hotel

Main street

The ruins turned out to be the Tuzigoot National Monument.  Tuzigoot means “crooked water” in Apache.  It is the remnant of a Southern Sinagua village built between 1000 and 1400.  It is located on the summit of a long ridge rising 120 feet above the Verde Valley and the marshland I had walked through earlier.
 

The sun was setting at about 5 pm when I got home to finally rest.  I had missed lunch, so Dolly made Fergie and I a nice dinner and now it is time to settle down for some TV.

See you later.