All about the flavor of a small mountain city and the surrounding outback: neighborhood surprises ... wildflowers and nature ... the forest ... people and events ... plus occasional comments on science fiction, music, and the Great Wide World Beyond
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Local Links of the Day
Sorry to be so late with this, but I just learned of the Agua Fria Festival this evening. It's happening Saturday, primarily at the Horse Shoe Ranch down where the Bloody Basin Road crosses the Agua Fria River. Sponsors are the Bureau of Land Management and the Agua Fria National Monument; the festival celebrates the Antiquities Act Centennial. It was this act which authorized creation of the monument by Pres. Bill Clinton in January, 2000. FYI, this section of the Agua Fria is a lovely perennial stream running through an awesome canyon that's only a couple of miles or so away from I-17. Lots of Indian ruins and petroglyph sites. If I ever get the slide scanner working, I have many pictures from explorations my husband and I made in this very neat area.
When I wrote the Big Bug News, that is to say, the PNI newspaper for the Mayer Coordidor, I talked my way into a private tour of the post wildfire Agua Fria nat'l monument with the ranger and one of her volunteers.
ReplyDeleteUp until then, I was bummed about the effects of the fire, even though I knew it was a natural occurance in grass land.
But then, when I saw the many, many petroglyphs they were finding for the first time because of the lack of grass it was a real eye-opener.
Turns out most of the damage done to the antiquities during that fire were done by fire-fighting bull dozers that accidently strayed into pit house ruins.
Most of the petroglyph photos my husband took were at Brooklyn Basin, Baby Canyon and Badger Springs. We weren't good for the long hikes required to get to the spots at the other canyons branching off the Agua Fria, and we always used a Subaru for outback driving, which was good -- but not good enough!
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