CANMT Trip: Walnut Canyon National Park

 We were driving along and all of a sudden we weren't in the desert anymore. It was beautiful. We were headed to Walnut Canyon National Park. I couldn't remember everything I had researched about it before the trip, but I knew there were two trails; an easy 0.7 mile trail and a strenuous 0.9 mile trail. When we got to the Visitor Center it was cold!

We didn't want to take time to dig out and change into pants, so we threw on jackets and went inside. Like always, we stamped our passports and got a Jr. Ranger packet. The ranger told us that the easy trail only gave you a view of the dwellings, while on the more strenuous trail you could go in the dwellings. She made it sound like it wasn't so bad, even with the 240 steps. So we chose the more strenuous Island Trail.
So we took the stairs down 185 feet to see the dwellings.

The stairs weren't bad. The rest of the one mile trail was terrible for me. We were so high up and there wasn't a railing. I was terrified. I can't believe I thought the meteor crater was scary. THIS was scary! I made Rocky hold Mel's hand the whole time and made her walk on on the side of Rocky away from the edge. I walked behind them so Mel couldn't see how scared I was. But she could tell. A few times she offered to hold my hand so I wouldn't be afraid. And I thought I was doing a good job by not screaming.

I can't believe people lived here.

It was amazing to see. The cliff dwellings are small. It's hard to imagine living in such a small area. But worse is the drop in the front yard.

There were so many. We only saw a few on the trail. Across the way you could see so many more dwellings.

All those holes are dwellings. You can also see the Visitor Center way up on top. It was time to go up the 240 stairs. This was actually the only strenuous part of the trail. It wasn't so bad. They had benches every so often. We stopped once to rest and Mel worked on her Jr. Ranger Packet. We weren't sure how far we had to go, but we heard, "I have to go potty" from Melodie. Great. There was no way I could go any faster, so Rocky jogged her up. Turns out there wasn't much of the way left. Whew!

Melodie turned in her Jr. Ranger packet, said her pledge and earned her badge. We heard the ranger talking with another lady who was coming back the next day. He said it might snow that night, so she might have to wait until they shovel the trail. Snow? What? It wasn't suppose to snow on our trip!
 We arrived at our hotel room the earliest we had arrived at a hotel room our whole trip: 5pm. We repacked the car to put all the camping stuff near the door, then Rocky brought pizza back to the hotel room. We took the opportunity to watch TV while eating pizza in the room.