Junior Ranger Review: Tuzigoot National Monument

We visited Tuzigoot in April 2016.

Tuzigoot is a village built by the Sinagua people on top of a hill and close to the Verde river. Sinagua is Spanish (sin agua) meaning "without water" and refers to the way these people managed to survive in this high desert landscape. Tuzigoot was occupied by the same people and at the same time as Montezuma Castle, which is another national monument we've visited. The neat thing archaeologists found here were lots of BIG pots, and you can see them in the visitor center/museum. Tuzigoot has the walls standing so you can see where all the rooms were. The rooms weren't very big, but each one was actually a house for an entire family.They must have spent a lot of time outside.

The junior ranger program here is available for kids as young as 1 year old, which is great if you have little ones. The little kids mainly have to look for things. Do you see a pot? Do you see a wall? Do you see a sign? The answers for the big kids are on the trail signs around the ruin and also in the visitor center/museum exhibits. Nice badge!

Right next to Tuzigoot there is a turnoff on the road with a sign that says Verde River Access. Be sure to take this turn off and take some time to explore the river. There's a gravel parking lot with a porta-potty and a path to the river. It's cool and shady under the cottonwoods ( a nice change from being out in the sun at Tuzigoot) and the water has a shallow area perfect for kids to poke about in. 

You can also hike along the river. It's easy to see why the Sinagua people liked it around here!

Cool and shady under the cottonwood trees.

Junior Ranger Review: Casa Grande Ruins

We visited the Casa Grande Ruins in March 2016.

Casa Grande National Monument in Arizona is conveniently located between Phoenix and Tucson.  It's a great place to check out for a couple of hours. Ancient Sonoran desert people (sometimes called Hohokam) built it 650 years ago. It had 4 floors and the logs used to build the ceilings were hand carried over 50 miles from the nearest forest, because the people had no pack animals or carts. About 600 logs were needed to build it, so that is an amazing amount of work! The current protective roof was built in 1932, which is surprising since it looks so modern. And it has always had owls living in it. Before there were park rangers to protect these amazing ruins, many people too chunks of the ruin and carved their names into it and you can still see the damage today, which is very sad.

Be sure to have the kids look for the secret room on the site. In the museum/visitor center there's also a great touch table that is very interesting for kids. It had rattlesnake skin, cactus boots (which are actually bird nests from inside a saguaro cactus), antlers, cactus skeleton, and other interesting items. The best part about Casa Grande Ruins is that the badges we earned are made out of wood! Beautiful!

Junior Ranger: "It's big! It's huge! It's large! I've never seen anything like the Casa Grande before!"

Mom: "I never realized how complex of a society the people had back then in this area. They had a society with farmers, artists, and rulers--to be able to build this large 4-story structure with materials brought from so far away.  And they figured out what to do with all that caliche they dug up in their fields. That's what they used to make the adobe. It's just like cement and has lasted for 600 years. Geniuses."

Junior Ranger Review: Montezuma Castle

We visited Montezuma Castle in March 2016.

Montezuma Castle in central Arizona is an amazing place. It's easy to see why the Sinagua people wanted to call this little corner home. The cliff curves around two sides, and on the third side is Beaver creek. It is shaded by cottonwood trees and beautiful Arizona sycamore trees with their silvery bark. The cliff had natural holes in it which the people only had to enlarge or build upon.  Sinagua is Spanish (sin agua) meaning "without water" and refers to the way these people managed to survive in this high desert landscape.

Our camera went dead just before our visit, so we didn't take any pictures at the Castle. Here's a video so you can see what it looks like:



The fourth side of this little area is the visitor center/museum, picnic area, and parking lot. You enter through the visitor center.

The junior ranger program here is set up for kids as young as age 1! We have a 2 year old, so we love it when he can easily be included. The little ones are asked to look for things (castle, bird, hole in rock, etc) and a coloring page (so make sure you bring colored pencils or crayons). There is a separate booklet for older kids. They have to find information primarily in the museum area of the visitor center, and also on trail signs outdoors.

And here's the badge:

Junior Ranger: "I liked having our lunch in the picnic area and after it was fun standing on the little berm by the creek and trying to throw sticks into the creek."

Mom: "There was a guy here today playing on a native American wooden flute and it was echoing on the cliffs. It gave us a feeling of the people who lived here. It's amazing to think about the little children that lived here climbing up and down that cliff each day!"

Junior Ranger Review: Joshua Tree National Park

We visited this park in May of 2016.

Joshua Tree National Park in southern California has an amazing landscape. It looks like an alien planet, with Joshua Trees reaching for the sky against a background of desert and huge mounds of enormous boulders.  It's really beautiful!

 Some things to know when you visit this park are that the visitor centers are tiny and two of them (the ones on the west and worth sides) are actually outside the park. So make sure you stop there before you turn and drive to the park entrance, so you can get your passport stamp, extra water, junior ranger booklets, and any souvenirs. You can also buy your park pass there so you can bypass the line at the ranger shack at the entrance. Note that they close at 5pm, and the southern visitor center actually closes at 4pm. Also note that Junior rangers should check out the few exhibits in the visitor center (or a ranger talk) and have a ranger or counter person sign their booklet on p.5 before you leave the visitor center.

Make sure you have lots of water (they recommend a gallon per person) and bring a picnic lunch and snacks. Don't forget the sunblock and hats. It can get really hot. We visited on a cool day, but the desert is so dry we still needed to drink a lot of water. Also make sure you let family or friends know where you are going. THERE IS NO FOOD, WATER, OR CELL PHONE SERVICE IN THE PARK! It's a wild place! And watch out for rattlesnakes; we saw one! They like to hide out under bushes where they are hard to see. This rattlesnake was traveling through the Hidden Valley and paid no attention to the gaggle of tourists who wanted to take his photo.

The western part of the park is the most scenic and has the all the boulders and Joshua trees, so I recommend heading to that area and doing some hiking. We entered at the western end of the park and visited the Hidden Valley trail and the Barker Dam trail which are 1-mile loops. We then drove through the rest of the park (which takes 2 hours!) and exited at the southern exit. The rest of the park is scenic desert landscape but without the boulders, and the joshua trees are few and smaller.

We passed the visitors station after they were closed, so we finished our junior ranger booklets at home and mailed them in. We found this website: http://mojavedesert.net/plants/ very helpful in completing pp. 20-21.

When we got our package back from Joshua Tree park, the kids were very excited to see that in addition to their signed workbooks and badges the park rangers included some paper junior ranger hats and even a children's book about Joshua trees! Wow! Thanks, Park Rangers!

Centennial Badge! Neat!

Junior Ranger says: "Seeing a rattlesnake was the best part. But it was scary!"

Mom says: "It was so beautiful here! Be sure to bring extra water. My kids drank a lot! And watch for rattlesnakes. I kept an eye on my kids and made sure they stayed on the trail and didn't go wandering off into the bushes since snakes like to hide under there. I also told the kids to not go reaching around or under rocks where snakes might be hiding."