Advertisement
Published: April 9th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Dead horse Lake
One of the Herons hangin on the shore. There were two of them - saw them fly off later. Pretty cool. Here we go! We are in Cottonwood at Dead Horse Ranch. It got it's name from the family who originally settled here. They had looked at several different ranches in the area and the one they chose was the one with the "dead horse" on it. When they sold the area to the State, there was a stipulation that the name remain "Dead Horse Ranch". It is a beautiful area. There is a big lagoon in the park that we drove to before we headed for the camping area. It's a really nice day area for picnicing - even had a couple of pretty herons right on the shore. On the way here, we saw this town way up in the hills and found out that it is an old mining town called Jerome. Cottenwood was established to supply the town. So the first day we were here, we took the 20 minute trek up the hill and explored the town. There were several original building (fronts) that I was able to capture. The whole town has been sliding off the hillside for quite some time and it's very obvious from the remains of the old buildings. They have started putting
View from Jerome
This is a newer part of town. It's kind of in between the two other older levels. up gi-hugic retaining walls but I personally would have to pass. It was another one of those tourist trap type places but the view from up on this "hillside" was PHENOMINAL. They are in the process of refurbishing a mansion owned by the owned of the Jerome Copper mine that is on State Park land now. I wish we had been able to see it, but maybe next year. We went up to Sedona today. It is a cute, very prosperous town. I have never seen so many t-shirt shops in all my life! We had lunch on the balcony of a little sandwich place on one end of town. The red rock is really striking and the formations are great. We stopped at a National Park camping area before we got there and, well, we have decided to try our first boondocking trip. We are going to head up there tomorrow and see if we can handle it.... We have our water tank full, gas for the generator and a plan to stay at least 2 weeks. We have been tracking the weather to see what is happening for the next 10 days or so and it isn't good.
Building front
The view from the front of one of the building remnants. This building actually had a bit left and it had been converted to a glass blowing shop. Nope. It ain't good at all. So we're going to hang in the area for a couple more weeks. We just can't handle the idea of being couped up in the trailer day after day in the rain... Anyway, the place we found is just south of Sedona in a Nat'l forest, a really secluded spot above a river about half way to a private land refuge. We were just told about another place not far from there where we could dry camp right on a river, which would be our preference, but we'll see. It's supposed to rain on Monday so I don't want to be any where near a river when that is happening. Arizona doesn't handle rain well - in any amount. There seems to be an awful lot to do in the area. A bunch of hiking trails that Bob and I would love to try. And the views around here are positively inspirational. I don't have any pictures of that yet, but I will for sure by this weekend.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.146s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0496s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb