We were getting restless in the long northern Arizona winter. Snow had laid on the ground, on and off, throughout the season, and the promise of good hiking days seemed far off, somewhere over the horizon.
Watching the news one morning, however, a though came upon Ely. Noticing the weather forcast for areas to the south, she said, "Maybe we should take a trip down to Sedona." Maybe indeed. After consultation with Ben and Beth, it was decided, and the next weekend we headed south.

Our first glimpse of Honanki Ruin near Sedona.

Our hiking goals were a pair of Sinagua ruins northwest of Sedona called Honanki and Palatki. I'd learned of these ruins via HikeArizona.com, but had no firsthand info. We headed for Honanki first, as it seemed like it might be the easier to access of the two. The trailhead was at the end of a relatively decent dirt road, and the parking area was crowded with cars, trucks, and Pink Jeeps. We didn't have a whole lot of time so we headed to the information kiosk and then embarked on the trail.
The sun was shining and warm, and we had maybe two hours until sunset so we set off down the red, dusty trail through the pinon-juniper forest. Beth, being from the Great North Woods, never failed to comment on our "dwarf" forest and how you can almost see over the trees. Ha ha, laugh it up. I chose not to remind her that her hometown was probably covered in ten feet of snow while we walked along in 60-degree weather.

The walls of Honanki behind a Prickly Pear.

After what hardly seemed like any time at all, we came to Honanki. It was big, sprawling along the sun-warmed Sedona redrock cliff, soaking up the solar rays. It climbed a talus slope up into an alcove. It was hard to say how large Honanki would have been when occupied, but no doubt several dozen people called it home while it was occupied.

Honanki fills the shady alcove behind the wall.

Unfortunately for the modern visitor, the Forest Service has closed off the alcove section of the ruin for the most part. This means that you can view this cool ruin only from the talus slope or a small, fenced-off section of the alcove that has been protected and stabilized. Obviously with this site getting high visitation and being so close into town, something had to be done or otherwise it would end up looking like Big Westwater Ruin outside of Blanding. Still it diminishes the "wild" experience of the site. Who am I kidding? As soon as I saw the Pink Jeep folks and the tourist kiosk, I knew this wasn't going to be a wild ruin.

More of Honanki going up into the alcove.

Also interesting to note were the abundance of shield pictographs. While unusual and unqiue at the time, and while all of us present certainly paid attention to them, painted in bold white across the red sandstone, it was only later that something else interesting was noted. While hiking Chinle Wash in 2008 we noticed another large white shield over a large cliff dwelling, almost identical to one that we saw at Honanki. I'm not a huge believer in coincidences, but who can say? Then again, it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility to have folks from the Verde Valley and folks from Monument Valley in contact with each other. Perhaps they were even the same people; after all the cliff dwelling along the Chinle was abandoned while Honanki was still occupied. They certainly could have taken in Anasazi refugees.

Shield design similar to one found in Chinle Wash.

Another shield at Honanki.

We spent as much time as we though we could afford at Honanki, poking among the stones and looking at the enigmatic pictographs. The shadows were lengthening, however, and we still hadn't checked into our hotel. We decided to leave for the day, and head over to Palatki to make reservations to get in there the next day. We hit the trail and then the road, kicking up a cloud of dust on our way back to "civilization."

A last look at the walls and rock art of Honanki before heading out.

To continue on to Day 2, click here.

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