Tuzigoot National Monument

Driving from Camp Verde to Kingman, AZ | Visiting Tuzigoot National Monument | December 2024

As if yesterday wasn’t a good enough first day back in Arizona, today started off with a long-anticipated sighting for us. We started this morning with driving over to a nearby campground/trailhead so that Curtis could find a letterbox. As he was driving, I saw something out of the corner of my eye – at first it looked like a big, disproportionate black cat, but I quickly realized what it was and yelled at Curtis to stop. There beside the road were at least a dozen coatis!! Our first time ever seeing them in the wild after so many years of living, visiting, and exploring in AZ! We were SO EXCITED!

One was even kind enough to look at the camera so we have a picture of its adorable little face. There were several in the trees, and more on the ground. We sat and watched them for a bit, then told them we loved them and said our goodbyes, then carried on with our day.

After Curtis found his box, we had to do some grocery shopping since we hadn’t been to a store since before leaving on this trip 10 days ago. Pretty impressive that we were able to store enough food for every single meal and snack in our tiny fridge and cabinet for that long! We did this in Cottonwood, then made our way to our main attraction for today, another spot that’s been a long time coming for us – Tuzigoot National Monument. This was sort of a running joke for us because we managed to hit most of the national park administered sites in AZ when we lived there, and have been to most of the others during our trips back over the years. But somehow, this one remained unvisited – not exactly for lack of trying, because there were a few times that we came close, but had friends that we were traveling with that vetoed it. Today we were finally making things right!

Tuzigoot is one of the larger standing complexes of the Sinagua people and was contemporaneous to much of the central Arizona sites that we’ve seen and visited: Tonto and Besh-ba-gowah being the most recent sites we’ve visited. The Southern Sinagua people are also the ones responsible for Montezuma Castle and inhabited the Upper Verde River valley, while their Northern cousins inhabited the region around Flagstaff and were responsible for the ruins around there: Wupatki and Walnut Creek principle among them.

Of course, all these sites span a time period from about 1100 CE to 1400 CE and might not have been occupied at exactly the same time. But we find it so incredibly interesting to connect the distinct cultures and architectural styles of all the ruins across the American Southwest. How they likely traversed and traded across the same routes we love to travel today. And how many of the current Puebloan cultures in Arizona and New Mexico still trace their ancestry and culture to these sites. Tuzigoot has strong ties to some of the bands of the Hopi people.

We arrived at the park and took the loop trail around and through the ruins. Thankfully it was dog friendly so we got to enjoy the walk together! Curtis went to the top of the ‘tower’ and conversed with the volunteer there who obliged with pointing out where several unexcavated ruins were just in the nearby hills. The Verde Valley is literally covered in ruins!

After that, we headed to the picnic area and had lunch here while we plotted out the rest of our day. While we could have easily found much more to do and places to stay in Arizona, the goal of this trip was to visit deserts in California which we had never seen, and we wanted to have enough time to enjoy them, so we needed to press on. We decided to make our way up to Kingman and stay in some BLM land outside of the city, with the intention of crossing into California tomorrow.

It wasn’t exactly a straight shot to Kingman from Cottonwood, but we were excited to drive through more scenic areas and new roads for us. We took 89A up to Jerome, and were shocked by how busy this tiny little mountain town was. We had visited with friends back in 2014, and didn’t remember there being anywhere near this amount of tourism here. I thought that by avoiding Sedona we’d be clear of crowds like this, but I guess I was wrong! We crept slowly through the town, enjoying the views we could see and pointing out places that we remembered, like the historic Connor Hotel where we had once stayed. After leaving town, the roads were much quieter, and we enjoyed driving through the mountains and descending into Prescott Valley on the other side. I remember also driving through Prescott a few times and always thinking it would be a great place to settle down if we ever decide to do that. We didn’t drive through the town today, so I have no idea how much it’s changed or grown and if we still feel that way…and honestly I don’t know if I want to know the answer to that, I’d prefer to just remember it as this little town that we loved driving through several times in our early 20s and dreamed about retiring in.

Next, we headed North on AZ-89 to I-40, and took that West to Kingman. In Kingman, we took US-93 to AZ-68, and to our camping area for tonight in a BLM area right off the highway. The drive was so scenic, we just couldn’t take our eyes off the rugged mountains. When we turned off onto the gravel road that led to the campsites, we found it to be kind of rough, but thankfully the first dispersed site was open so we just pulled in and made ourselves at home. We had a ridge that was blocking us from the highway so it wasn’t too loud or exposed, and we had great views in every direction. After settling in, Curtis looked around and chose a peak he wanted to hike, so he took off while Charlotte and I relaxed at our site.

Curtis: The higher peaks up the road were much to far away to try with the amount of sunlight I had left, but fortunately, right across the road was a shorter peak with the very original name: Sugarloaf. Seriously…at this point I’ve hiked 9 peaks with some variation of Sugarloaf.

The hike up was straightforward, and as soon as I cleared a ridge I was met with unlimited views up and down the Black Mountains, featuring rugged and steep cliffs, as well as a prominent butte aptly named ‘Thumb Butte’ – Holes reference anyone? It was a short hike, but made me ever thankful to be able to hike in the Arizona mountains.

After Curtis returned, I made dinner and we rushed to eat and clean up so that we could climb up the nearest ridge to see the sunset. Charlotte wasn’t interested in climbing, however, so Curtis ended up walking her around while I scaled the ridge to a nice vantage point and enjoyed both the sunset and surrounding views that Curtis had enjoyed. We also checked out a couple of mine shafts before making our way back to the van and relaxing for the rest of the night. Another great day in Arizona, ending up at another gorgeous camping spot!