Hikes & Excursions
Member-Only Hikes
One of the advantages of Membership is the ability to participate in guided hikes to archaeological sites. Watch this page for announcements of upcoming hikes. Most are free but a few have small fees to cover expenses.
Members Rock Art Ranch Trip with an Overnight at La Posada Hotel
Wednesday, October 23 – Thursday, October 24
$95 Per Person - Limit of 12 Participants
Excursion leaders, Richard McGaugh and Monica Buckle
Join us for unforgettable excursion to the famed Rock Art Ranch located East of Winslow, Arizona. The private ranch is home to thousands of Ancestral Hopi petroglyphs and rock art images nestled in a canyon. Rock Art Ranch has been in the same family for several generations. Since the ranch is off-the-beaten-path we strongly recommend all participants spend the night at La Posada Hotel in Winslow prior to the tour.
We will check-in to La Posada Hotel the afternoon of Wednesday, October the 23rd. There will be a welcome dinner that evening at La Posada's famous Turquoise Room Restaurant. Enjoy fabulous food and beverages and have a relaxing evening at the historic hotel. The following morning of Thursday, October the 24th we will check-out of the hotel and depart for Rock Art Ranch at 9:00am. The ranch tour starts promptly at 10:00am. Please note, it is a 40-minute drive from La Posada Hotel to Rock Art Ranch. Since it is a private ranch, it is safe to leave your luggage and personal belongings in your car. Just be sure to lock the doors. Please know, both Richard and I have visited the ranch before.
The tour fee includes admission to Rock Art Ranch with a ranch guide. Please note, La Posada Hotel and dinner at the Turquoise Room are additional fees. VVAC has a discounted room rate at $159.00 (without tax). Please call the hotel’s front desk to book your room with the block code provided here: VERD102324
This excursion is exclusive to VVAC members. Advance registration is required. Please register here, where you will find further details:
Members Private Tour of the Grand Canyon Museum Collection and Lunch at El Tovar
Thursday, November 7 at 10:00 am
$75 per person - Limit of 10 Participants
Excursion leaders, Richard McGaugh and Monica Buckle
Join us for a day of exploration at The Grand Canyon Museum Collection is a storage and research facility dedicated to preserving the physical artifacts that tell the various aspects of the Grand Canyon story. The storage facility, completed in 1999, has over 6,000 square feet of climate-controlled storage and research space, and houses over 1.6 million objects from seven different disciplines: archaeology, ethnology, history, archive/ manuscripts, biology, geology, and paleontology.
Our tour is led by Kim Besom, Curator at The Grand Canyon Museum Collection. Kim Besom was instrumental in the development of VVAC’s Grand Canyon exhibition that is still on view at VVAC. Spend the morning discovering the material remains of past human life and activities at Grand Canyon, including lithic tools dating back 12,000 years to the Paleo-Indians, Archaic split- twig figurines and Ancestral Puebloan pottery. As well as, non-archaeological material artifacts of the non-native cultures at Grand Canyon, including: mining and early tourism artifacts, John Wesley Powell's pocket watch, the Walter Clement Powell diaries from the second Powell expedition, and a pen used by Woodrow Wilson to sign the act creating Grand Canyon National Park in 1919.
The fee includes entry to the collection center; however, admission to enter Grand Canyon National Park is an additional fee. Lunch at El Tovar Dining Room is also an additional expense.
This excursion is exclusive to VVAC members. Advance registration is required. Please register here, where you will find further details:
Members Excursion to Fitzmaurice Pueblo, and Lunch at Cracker Barrel Restaurant
Wednesday, December 11, 10:00am
Limit of 12 Participants
$30 Per Person
Conducted by Richard McGaugh and Monica Buckle
Join VVAC and visit the Fitzmaurice Pueblo Site located in
Prescott. Guided by a local Site Steward we will view a pueblo that was
constructed and occupied by people Archaeologists call the “Prescott
culture”. The amount of Prescott culture ceramic wares in the Verde Valley
and vice versa shows a very fluid relationship between the areas. The
Prescott heartland was located along prehistoric shell and turquoise trade
routes connecting Southern California and the Mojave Desert with the
Southwest. The site was occupied between 1050 and 1300 AD, a mesa
top pueblo existing on the south side of Lynx Creek in present-day
Prescott Valley. After the tour we will have a home style group lunch at a
nearby Cracker Barrel restaurant in Prescott. Please note, lunch is an
additional expense. Register by clicking HERE.
