Wildlife Sightings and Pictographs

One thing about being out there all the time, hiking all over in different habitats and in different times of the day have provided excellent opportunities to view wildlife. Hilina has had the tremendous opportunity to see animals upclose such as deer, elk, bison, pronghorns, squirrels, skunks, jackrabbits and cottontails, owls, herons, woodpeckers, ravens, and so much more.

A Great Horned Owl

Skunks going after the bird feeders at the campground

Great Blue Heron high in the trees

We also took a trip over the Palatki ruins, where a Sinaguan pueblo village was located in the Sedona Red Rocks and left beautiful painted pictographs.

Palatki Ruins

The landscape around the ruins

These pictographs date from several different time periods and can often be told apart by the pigments that were used. White colors indicatae Sinaguan art from around 1100AD. The black are charcoal drawings of later Yavapai indians. There are also pictographs from the Apache and some ancient ones to peoples well before the Sinaguan.

These pictographs were originally white, but then the soot of a fire coated and protected them