The entrance sign to Sunset Crater National Monument. You can see the cinder ash at the bottom of the sign. This whole area is a lava flow, one of the newest in the area at somewhere around 900 - 1,000 years old.
Here you see a hillock formed of lava.
I believe this is Sunset Crater from the top of cinder hills overlook.
Too bad it was such a dark day, it was hard to find a sunny spot to show the cinder ash on the ground. Here it's reddish brown, but the ash is mostly black in the park.
The ash makes a gravel like surface throughout much of the park.
This view is from the cinder hills outlook. You can see other cinder hills in a chain out across the desert as the plates moved over the hotspot creating the volcanoes, much like the chain of islands in Hawaii.
The entrance sign to Sunset Crater National Monument. You can see the cinder ash at the bottom of the sign. This whole area is a lava flow, one of the newest in the area at somewhere around 900 - 1,000 years old. 
Here you see a hillock formed of lava.
I believe this is Sunset Crater from the top of cinder hills overlook. 
Too bad it was such a dark day, it was hard to find a sunny spot to show the cinder ash on the ground. Here it's reddish brown, but the ash is mostly black in the park. 
This view is from the cinder hills outlook. You can see other cinder hills in a chain out across the desert as the plates moved over the hotspot creating the volcanoes, much like the chain of islands in Hawaii.
