July 28, 2007

Pinetop, Arizona

Our first activity of the day was a resort orientation breakfast to hear about the activities in the area, and to chow down on provided fruit and pastries. I made a list of all the things we might be able to do in the week ahead. Scott and Alisa arrived from their motel and we started off to find the Williams Fish Hatchery. It was 8 miles off the highway in the Apache Indian Reservation. Finding it closed we drove about 20 more miles south, into the Reservation to Ft. Apache. I could hardly believe I was at the fabled Ft. Apache, of the television show, Rin Tin Tin fame. I used to watch "Rinty" and the little boy private in their weekly adventures on television. Of course it wasn't filmed in Arizona, but at least I'd heard of Ft. Apache before. The U.S. Army built Ft Apache to keep the Apache in line and on the reservation. I'm sure today's Apache don't think much of that part of American history. But the Fort later became a boarding school, the Theodore Roosevelt School, for the Apache children, and is still in use as such. We toured the grounds of the fort, and read the description of the various buildings, including officer's quarters and enlisted barracks. One quarters had an interesting window in the middle of the chimney (see photo left). Then as a downpour threatened to catch us we visited the Apache Culture Center on the grounds. Included is very nice and recently expanded museum. Outside the museum were Apache wikiups or the temporary dwellings of the Apache.

The rain had passed the area and we drove a few miles to the Hopi / Zuni Indian Kinishba Ruins dating from as early as 800 AD. They were excavated in the 1930's and worked on by the Indian Div. of the CCC during the Depression era. The 5 miles of dirt/mud road getting there was quite an adventure! I would have turned back long before we saw the instant river in the washes, but Scott and Alisa's Aspen has a 4-wheel drive, so we forged ahead. A very interesting place, yet we couldn't really do it justice with all the mud and rain to dodge. So we drove back in the muddy Aspen and stopped at an Apache lunch wagon in White River. We got fry bread tacos and they were absolutely delicious. Fry bread is wheat flour, baking soda and salt, deep fried.

Back in Pinetop we took the Mogollon Rim Walk (pic on left). Because of the daily afternoon and evening storms we kept to the half mile paved walk. We could oversee the Mogollon Rim and the land to the west. Then we found the mile long Woodland Lake Park perimeter walk. Along the way we way plenty of hungry ravens, which are birds that seem to be all over in Arizona. There were fish and ducks and a bunch of people enjoying the day walking around the lake.
To top it off we went to the "Munich Haus" for dinner, situated on Fred's Lake in Pinetop.