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| Just East of Phoenix lie the Superstitions |
A quick leap out of chronological order to share a short Arizona visit last April.
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| Another view of the Superstitions. |
On this visit, my best friend from fourth grade and I went for a drive into the mountains to retrace one of our favorite outings. Upon passing Goldfield Ghost Town in the Superstitions, we realized we knew about it, but had never been. (Almost) all of our lives in the area, and we never once ventured to the little tourist town to check it out for ourselves! It was one of those moments where you sever your initial intentions of continuing to travel forward with a split second decision and take that hasty turn off the road at the absolutely last second. That’s the taste of adventure!
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| The narrow gauge railroad at Goldfield Ghost Town |
Goldfield Ghost Town’s train gives passengers a cute little tour, passing by and pointing out such fascinating local treasures as palo verde trees and saguaros. This may be great for unfamiliar out-of-towners, but for those of us who grew up with such “exotic” species in our own backyards, we just sat back and enjoyed the staggeringly slow and campy (but cute) tour with our comedian tour guide. Honestly, we probably could have made the loop faster if we had walked backwards along the tracks, but we never expected to be blown out of the water with fascinating new information and were really just along for the fun of the ride.
Though, what we didn’t know is that it was once an actual mining town. Goldfield’s mines were quick to dry up, rendering it a ghost town within about a five year period before 1900. And here I had always thought that some random guy just picked this spot to start his own little tourist mecca for all things Wild West. I believe that I am correct in my assumption that most of the buildings are new and built to please visitors who want to feel like they’ve stepped back in time (with coffee shops, gift stores and air conditioning of course) and to be fair, that’s exactly why we went.
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| Back roads heading further into the mountains |
After Goldfield we continued our road trip following the winding roads into the hills.
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| Central Arizona’s beautiful desert |
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| Canyon Lake |
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| The road heading down to Canyon Lake |
My family used to come up here with a little powerboat and we would race down the river. I remember once we did that on Christmas day. This scene doesn’t change much from season to season. It’s almost always blue skies and beautiful weather. ….unless it’s 115 degrees out. Then you most certainly want to be IN the water, not on it.
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| Winding road into Jerome |
Ninety miles North of Phoenix lies another once-mining town, Jerome. It’s another perfect day trip from the Phoenix area that I took with another close friend of mine.
Today, Jerome is more of an artist colony than a ghost town. Packed with art galleries of all sorts (and wineries!), it’s a fantastic place to visit for the day.
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| Jerome has a lot of character, some modern and some left over from the turn of the century. |
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| San Francisco peaks in the distance across the valley. |
As seen from Jerome, Flagstaff lies at the foot of these mountains, some sixty miles away.
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Heading North from Jerome towards Sedona, the iconic red rocks become more and more prominent.
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| Sedona’s red rocks |
Not sure what’s up with the angle, but I think I was more concerned with driving and conversation than photographing, and just wanted to share the colors.
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Giant chickens, red rocks and vortexes. Holy fried nuggets, Batman! This must be a really bizarre place!
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| Snow in April |
Interestingly enough, I got snowed on when I was leaving Arizona! In May! See, it’s not hot all the time. 😉