the wild west

So, life in Arizona is a bit more wild than in its western neighbor.  They do not have a helmet law, we've seen kids in the back of pick-ups and no hands free issues with the cel phone.  More freedom of choice.  I'm not mad at them for it.  But a good ol' road trip was in order to see more of this wild land.  The big sister is not going to school for now but we do like to follow a general Waldorfy approach to things.  Also, she may go  back at some point so we do like to incorporate Waldorf subjects into what we do.  Not so much in a book way but in an experiential way.  Third grade studiest farming, native Americans and house building.  We figured we're in the perfect place for a little native studies, so we headed off to Montezuma's castle.  It was built by the Sinagua about 700 years ago.

I love this place, but I agree with the girls in that, "It would be way funner if we could go inside."  I would just love to explore up there.

I would love to walk through all the rooms like it was a model home and choose our bedrooms, see if we could figure out which part was the kitchen and ponder the potty issue.  Every time I see something like this- you know, a huge structure built into the side of a cliff with mud most likely brought up one fistful at a time- I realize I don't really have as strong a work ethic as I'd like to think of myself as having.  "...but I stay up on my computer working late."  doesn't really seem to compare to scaling a cliff with one handful of mud.

So, I guess we'll have to do with a small scale model.

A cotton plant.  I'd never seen one unripe before.  Cotton, corn, squash, sunflowers and cactus were the main plants that they cultivated.  They built an irrigation system from the creek across the way from their shelter.  Just imagine the effort of getting a glass, oops I mean a gourd of water when thirsty in the middle of the night.

I fell into one of these once as a kid while roller skating and my mom had to pull all of these needles out of my rump with tweezers.  Ah, the scars of childhood...