Train Ride 4/27/2007

We took our train ride today. It was wonderful. The scenery was beautiful. The weather could not have been better. The ride started in Clarksdale and went to Perkinsville. It's a 40 mile round trip and takes about 4 hours. You can ride in a Pullman type car or an open car as shown below. We rode in the open car on the way out so we could take pictures and in the Pullman type most of the time on the way back. The railroad is called the Verde Canyon Railroad and was originally built to haul copper ore from Clarksdale to Drake 38 miles away. It connected with the Santa Fe Railroad for shipment to other parts of the US. I believe you can click on the pictures to expand them, especially the eagle one. Then you can actually see the eagle. :-)

The cars all have names, we were in the Tucson Pullman type car and the Mesa in the open car. Each Pullman type has an open type with it so you are not too crowded.

This is the first thing you see when you leave the station. It is copper slag. It covers about 40 acres and is about 40 feet deep. It's the result of 40 years of copper mining. The rods and tin roofing were used to keep the slag off the tracks.

This is one of the trestles the train goes over on the trip and one of the many curves.

I know this is not a good picture of an eagle, but he was so accommodating. He flew right by the train and then landed on the pinnacle and posed for us. I don't believe I could have gotten a better picture even if I would have had a stronger telephoto lens. The train was shaking so bad that I am amazed that the pictures turned out as well as they did. On the way back we saw the nest with two eaglets in it. They have named the eagles Black and Decker. They have raised broods here for 10 years.

This is the Verde River. It is the water supply for the whole Verde Valley. This riparian area brings a lot of different types of plants and wildlife that wouldn't be here if there wasn't any water. The main type trees are the cottonwood and the white bark sycamore. The animals are the heron, elk and eagles. They say that a large tree can transpire a 100 gallons of water a day. Of course there are many other types of plants and animals that use this area.

This is the only tunnel on the trip. They brought 25 Swedes over from Sweden to make the tunnel in 1910. They had to blast through solid limestone. It took them six months. The tunnel is 680 feet long and is curved.

This is just one of the many beautiful views on the trip. At one place on the trip you can see the Mogollon Rim which run 300 miles though New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and of course Arizona.

The red rock only out crops for about 25 miles around Sedona.

On the way back the engine goes to the back of the train and pulls us back, with the cars going in the opposite direction from the way we came. Fortunately the seat backs switch so that you are not riding backwards.

Prescott and Montezuma's Castle

We drove to Prescott today. It's about 40 miles from Cottonwood but it seemed like a hundred. Route 89A to Prescott from Cottonwood is the curviest, mountainous road I have ever driven. About a tenth of the way up is a town called Jerome. It is an old mining town and it is literally hanging on the the hill side. Many of the buildings are cantilevered out of the mountain side. The road is narrow, there is no shoulder and you are right up against the guard rails, when there are any. The views are great, most curves are listed at 20 miles an hour and many of them are U curves. When we got to the top it said the elevation was 7000 feet. Going down wasn't quite as bad. When we got to the other side it was amazing, there was a flat plateau as far as the eye could see. There is a new town growing up there called Prescott Valley. We still had about 15 miles to go to Prescott but it was all on a flat plain. We drove around town stopped at the town square and visited the shops around the court house. We ate lunch at a Taco Bell and headed back home. Peggy is really afraid of those windy, mountainous roads so we took another but longer way home. We went back by route 69 and 169 to interstate 17. The good thing about doing that is you get to see a different part of the country. We decided to stop at Montezuma's Castle on the way back. It is just a few miles off interstate route 17 near Camp Verde.
This is the only pull off we could find with a view. The pull off is just around one of those U curves. Didn't get any pictures in Prescott it's just a big town. It's weather is pleasant in the summer because it's at an elevation of 5300 feet.

This is Montezuma's Castle it was built around 1000 AD as were most of the Pueblos in the southwest. This one was built by the Sinaquas. They were all abandon around 1400 AD and no one knows why. Hopis claim they are the descendants of these tribes.

This is the sand stone that the castle was made from. It looks very crumbly to me. There are hole all through it. Some of the slabs have broken away and look like they are going to fall at any minute. For further in formation about this National Monument click on the link below.

http://www.nps.gov/moca/

Sign telling the benefits of the Creosote Bush and how it was used.

Picture of a Creosote Bush in bloom. There are more pictures in the album under Arizona.

Tomorrow we are going on our train ride.

Sedona

We went to Sedona today. The country is just beautiful. It really is Red Rock Country. I believe you can click on all these pictures to expand them. They do look more impressive expanded.

This is a view from a pull off a few miles from Sedona. Note that the red rocks are not on the top layer in the mountains but near the bottom.

These home were on the road to Red Rock State Park. Every where you look you see beautiful homes like these. These are the rule not the exception. There certainly is some money in the area. The road is a loop road that comes out again on 89A the road to Sedona. We stopped at the park for some information but didn't go into the park. We drove farther up the road but it turned into a dirt road and since I didn't know at the time how far it went and where it went we turned around and went back the way we came to 89A. We later found out that it is dirt only for a few miles and is a very scenic drive. We intend to go back later and finish the drive.

This is the Chapel of the Holy Cross. It's about 5 miles out of Sedona. What a beautiful location and view from it's chapel.

This is a view in the back area of the chapel. I thought this was a good picture of Peg. As you can see she has quit dying her hair.

This one is called Bell Rock and is about 10 miles further down the road from Sedona. I assume you can tell why they call it the Bell Rock? Every where you go in the area they are working on the roads and building new businesses and homes.

This picture was taken from the airport. It is on the top of a Mesa and as you can see offers a great view of at least part of Sedona. There are a couple other views in the album and of course more pictures of the red rock formations.

Cottonwood

4/22/2007
We drove over to Miami, Globe and Claypool on route 60. They are about 15 miles east of Superior. We went to the Wal-mart for some groceries. The drive over is very mountainous and scenic. We just rested the rest of the day and got ready to move.

4/23/2007
We moved to the Turquoise Triangle RV Park in Cottonwood AZ. Cottonwood is about 15 miles west of interstate route 17 on route 260. It is in the Red Rock Country. We will be here a week visiting the sites. Peggy lost a filling in her tooth and made an appointment with a dentist in Camp Verde. Camp Verde is a small town about 15 miles west of Cottonwood at the intersection of interstate 17 and route 260.

4/24/2007
In the morning we drove over to Clarksdale. It's about 5 miles further west on Historic route 260. We wanted to see where the train left from. There is a four hour train ride through a canyon in this area which we want to take. On the way back we stopped at the Tozigoot National Monument. After the monument we went to Peggy's dentist appointment. The dentist told Peg she would have to have the tooth capped and it would cost $1100.00. She decided to wait until we got home to have it done.

Sign explaining the ruins.

Path to the ruins.

Some of the rooms at this site. Of course they all had wooden roofs and the entrance was from the roof down a latter.

It seems that they don't know why any of these people in the whole southwest left the area and they don't know where they went or what became of them. The people that built this are called the Sinaqua (which means with out water in Spanish). Tuzigoot is Apache for Crooked Waters.

This cactus was in bloom just outside the visitors center. Here is the link to the Tuzigoot site if you want more information.

http://www.nps.gov/tuzi/

Boyce Thompson Arboretum

4/20-21/2007
The following pictures for these dates are all taken at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park near Superior, AZ. We decided to go on Friday as well as on Saturday. The arboretum is 320 acres so we knew we couldn't see it all in one day. On Friday we went with a tour guide and on Saturday we just went around the park revisiting areas were we wanted to take more pictures. They have so many exotic plants from other countries that it is difficult to know what all of them are. Most of them are labeled but not all. So I don't have all of them labeled, like the one below. If you are interested there are many more pictures at my picture album site.

Here is an example of one I don't know the name of but it is so pretty that I included it any way. So many cactus look alike to those of use that are not knowledgeable about cactus.

This one was labeled and is called the Yellow Bird of Paradise. It is a small bush with very feathery leaves.

This one is called the Bottle Brush Tree. It really stands out in a stand of other trees. The first time I saw one of these was in Key West, Florida. They are beautiful.

This one is the Joshua tree. There is a Joshua Tree National Park in California. The following is from the Joshua Tree National Park Site, "The Joshua tree, Yucca brevifolia, is a giant member of the lily family. Like the California fan palm, Washingtonia filfera, the Joshua tree is a monocot, in the subgroup of flowering plants which also includes grasses and orchids. The Joshua tree provides a good indicator that you are in the Mojave Desert, but you may also find it growing next to a saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert in western Arizona or mixed with pines in the San Bernardino Mountains." For more information on the Joshua Tree National Park click on this link http://www.joshua.tree.national-park.com/info.htm#tree.

This is an unusual looking tree as seen below.

The Boojum Tree.

This is the flute player they had there for the Arbor Day celebration. He had about 10 different flutes with him and played several of them. They were made from different types of wood. The weather that day was very cool and windy. He tried to play a flute that was made of Cedar but it wouldn't play right. He said that the cedar wood flute is very sensitive to cold. The flute music to my ear is very soothing. It was very nice to be able to walk around the park and hear the flute music in the air. It gave you a sort of surreal feeling. We had brought our lunch to eat in the picnic area but it was so cool we decided to go back to the motorhome and eat it.