Thursday, March 13, 2014

Fun Road Trip


Arizona Sunsets


We ended up exploring a good part of Arizona today by taking a 300 mile road trip that took us to some interesting places. First stop was Montezuma Castle. The structure was built between 1100 and 1300 and is a five story 20 room dwelling. It sits in a cliff recess 100 feet above the valley floor.

 Montezuma Castle

Another View



Palo Verde Tree

More Barkless Trees

From Montezuma Castle we continued north bound for Sedona which is located along scenic route 179. The views along this route are fantastic, and the rock formations like Courthouse Butte, Bell Rock and Cathedral Rock give this area its red rock claim to fame. Traffic was very heavy going through Sedona and we didn’t have an opportunity to stop and walk around, we will save that for another time.

From Sedona we took alternate route 89 which left Sedona and headed for Cottonwood. It was a beautiful drive but our goal was to continue on to the mining towns of Clarkdale and Jerome. These were booming towns during the early 1900’s.  The mines were owned by W.A. Clark and along with another one of his mines in Montana produced the majority of cooper in this country.

Mining Town of Jerome 



We stopped for lunch at a cute Mexican Restaurant in Clarkdale than continued on our way through the town of Yarnell, a quirky little hippy town in an unusually beautiful mountain setting with very interesting shopping opportunities Chris would definitely love to go back. We then continued on through Congress, an old gold mining ghost town then Wickenberg and back to Lake Pleasant. It was a long day of driving but well worth it.

View of Pleasant Lake from the visitors center