April 23, 2016 Prescott, Arizona

A fun day in downtown Prescott today.

Dinosaurs in a yard in town. We stopped at the Earth Day festival at Court house square.

John liked the emergency equipment at the Earth Day fair. This guy is a ‘living’ statue. I took his photo and gave him a dollar and he jumped up and  did a bunch of poses. Scared me to death.

We stopped at the Superstition Meadery and had a flight of 12 meads. Really tasty. Then on to the Granite Mountain Brewing. In the photo next to the logo is a lighted beer mug tree.

John enjoying  a FUBAR IPA at Granite Mountain. Downtown historic Prescott.

At the Sharlot Hall museum they were having a working cowboy fest. We saw a ferrier making a horse shoe, a western band.

John with a saddlemaker. Fort Misery is the oldest building in Arizona.

The highlight of the Sharlot Hall museum is a HUGE log cabin Governor’s mansion. It was only used for two governors then they moved the capital of Arizona to Tucson. Inside another building was this display of indian pots and basket.

April 22, 2016 Granite Mountain, Arizona

We hiked up the mountain you can see from camp. Supposed to be the most popular hike in the park.  4 miles, 2.100 vertical. We haven’t hiked this much vertical in along time. My legs are sore.

These 500 foot faces on this side of Granite Mountain are the best climbing in Arizona. They are also the nesting area for peregrin falcons, so they are closed to climbing till July.  There was a big burn, lots of dead trees.

Really cool pink granite rocks here. John is trapped in this burnt out tree.

Some of the ponderosa’s survived the fire. The summit was this huge pile of rocks. We didn’t climb up, we could see it fine from the bottom.

John looking over, behind him is Skull Valley. The trail back down.

Rocks and dead trees. This one looked like it was screaming in agony.

Sunset was lovely from camp.

Lots of flowers blooming. Paintbrush, penstamen, claret cup cactus, asters. Senicio, lupines, vetch and mahonia.

Larkspur, purple nightshade and a lizard. The agave plants live for 10 years, then send up this HUGE stalk to bloom, then die.  Stalk starting, full stock blooming over the tiny plant (no wonder they die, takes everything they have to bloom!), dead stalk still standing, flower and the plant before the bloom.

April 20-21, 2016 Congress-Prescott, Arizona

 

Wildflowers and cactus.

Saguaros. Nothing like a solar shower in the desert at the end of a warm day.

Yellow flowers and cholla blossoms. The moon is looking almost full now.

Sunset. On our way to Prescott we drove through a town called Skull Valley. It is less direct than going through Yarnell, but I guess the road is not good for big RV’s, so we took the back way truck route.

We are camped at Granite Basin in the national forest outside of Prescott. It is lovely. I can’t remember the last time we camped in pine trees. Very pleasant, in the 70’s. We hiked to Granite Basin lake. It is really tiny, so we decided not to come back with the boats. It is more of a fishing pond.  The lake is backed by Granite mounain.

Ponderosa trees, lovely. John having dinner at our campsite.

Sunset from our site. Chockcherry blossoms, lupine. I don’t know what the white, pink or yellow ones are, they are not in my books.

April 17-19, 2016 Quartzsite-Congress, Arizona

The wind died back to a breeze today. In the mid 80’s and sunny. Very  pleasant.

Stopped by the River Oasis used bookstore today. Great store. Paul the owner is a practicing nudist, but for the store he wears a crochet pouch. Pretty interesting guy, used to travel as a famous jazz pianist.  John at dinner he BBQ’d. I love it when we can eat outside. Sunset colors behind him.

I finished the latest basket today. Patriotic. John filling the fresh water tank with water at the RV pitstop in Quartzsite. The water from the Colorado river this far south is terrible, full of salts, fertilizer, pesticides and all of the stuff people dump in the water upstream. So we got Reverse osmosis water by the gallon.

We headed toward Congress, Arizona. On the way we went through Salome, Where she danced- the town founder says it is so hot here that when his wife, Salome took off her shoes she had to dance to keep her feet from burning. Just past Salome is the Passmore Gas company. It is owned by a Mr. Passmore. Then Harcuvar-photo of down town Harcuvar and past there are lots of farms, and this one has a bus load of migrant workers weeding.

We passed through Hope, and now beyond Hope. Hope was named by the businessmen in town who hoped for more business. We ended up in Congress. Not much to Congress so we visited the old historic cemetaries. The top one is still in use, the bottom one is the pioneer one, which most of the graves are unmarked.

Both were pretty old. Couple interesting head stones, Two with cowboy mentioned and one for Roadkill-no explaination.

The orginial town of Congress was at the gold mine. After the mine gave out the town moved to the crossroads and railroad stop. The old ghost town is gated and has these signs. We are once again camped in free BLM dispersed camping out on the desert. Very quiet.

Sunset from our site. The next day we went out to see the sights around Congress. The first two were huge painted rocks, Frog Rock and Skull rock. Frog rock was painted in the 1920’s by a woman who thought the rock looked like a frog, the town now keeps it painted. Skull Rock is along the railroad . Rumor has it that the rock was painted by railroad workers to surprize the passengers as the train came around a curve. Locals keep it painted now.

Beautiful country near Skull Rock. Stanton is a near by ghost town. The remains of it are in an RV park in Stanton.  This is the hotel.

The Rv park office is in the old stage stop and saloon. The side of the hotel.

Windows on the hotel and the Antelope flats station house. At the original mine area they found gold nuggets the size of potoatoes. The park is now run by a group who still gold mine in the area.

We also went to Yarnell, Where the Desert Breeze meets the mountain Air. It is  about 2000 feet higher than Congress.  Looking down from near Yarnell you can see a mine , a dairy farm and way in the back Congress.

These giant spurs are in a round-a-bout in front of  a huge housing development and golf course they are building called Wickenburg Ranch, outside of Wickenburg, Az.