May 9, 2002
Day off today, Barb is doing some long overdue filing and I'm going to tackle some e-mail and do a quick update here. Then it's "puttering" for me. Taking some more pictures of the trailer to add to the "For Sale" page, repair the spice drawer (it's falling off its rollers) and scrape some unneeded decals off the Rode Abode. And if I get around to it, reglue the outside thermometer in the truck and rig some kind of a brace for the monitor on the computer table there too.
But let's get caught up on the last couple of days of sightseeing. On the left, Barb is looking out toward the mining town of Jerome from inside one of the ruined pueblos around here called Tuzigoot. No, that's not a Dutchman's name, it's an Apache word meaning "crooked water" referring to nearby Peck's Lake. On the right, the yellow/brownish colored fields are remnants of the mines in Jerome. The copper mines' runoff lies here, and periodically these fields are flooded to keep the dust down, thus the little dykes.
Before it was abandoned (and nobody knows why it was) this pueblo consisted of 86 ground floor rooms and 15 or so second story rooms. As late as the 1300's there were probably about 225 people living here full time. Each family had at least one room to themselves. On the left is an example of the roofs built on the 5'6" walls. On the right is a place where the National Park Service people are restoring some of the wall. Built largely of limestone, constant care was and is needed.
On the left we're standing at the uppermost point in the ruins, and then there's Barb standing at trails end, that you can barely make out at the top of the picture on the left. The Sinaguan people built this on the crown of a summit rising some 120 feet above the Verde Valley.
Now we're looking up at where I took the previous two pictures. There were few exterior doors; entry was by way of ladders through openings in the roofs. The village began as a small cluster of rooms that were inhabited by about 50 people for about 100 years around 1125 AD, and then during the 1200s the population doubled and doubled again as refugee farmers, fleeing drought in outlying areas, settled here.
On the way to Jerome, we looked back and could see the ruins, but admittedly they blend in to the surrounding hill pretty well, being made entirely of local rock and limestone. On the right is Cleopatra Hill, rising above the town of Jerome.
We're at the Jerome State Historic Park, which used to be home to the Douglas family. James Douglas built the landmark on the hill just above his Little Daisy Mine.
On the left is the Douglas mansion from a street in what is now Jerome, the largest ghost town in the USA. Douglas designed the house as a hotel for mining officials and investors as well as for his own family. It featured a wine cellar, billiard room, marble shower, steam heat, and, much ahead of its time, a central vacuum system. Douglas was most proud of the fact that the house was constructed of adobe bricks that were made on the site. On the right is a picture giving a perspective of how steep the hill is that this little town sits on.
Most the streets are one way, and the typical kind of arts & crafts shops that a town like this can support. The mines all closed down in 1953, and the population sank to 150 from a high in 1879 of 15,000 making it the 3rd largest city in Arizona at the time. Artists were attracted to the area along with some outlaw bikers and "hippies" bringing the population in 1979 to 400, and in 1988 it was 800. Today there are about 900 people calling Jerome home.
Then it was back to "Jeeping" as we took several small dirt roads that took us nowhere in particular. Except for one that had this sign. And there around the corner over the hill, Bingo! We were in another very small town with more than its share of "antique" stuff. The Gold King Mine.
Regardless of what the signs said, I read "Caution: Tourist Trap ahead".
But a friendly one. Anytime a burro will come poke its nose in the window and drool on me, it's a friendly town. She looked like she'd seen better days, and had what I thought might have been a horrible tooth infection or something else wrong with its lower right jaw.
Sure enough, entrance to the place was ultimately through those doors under the sign "Ghost Town." Since it was after 5 PM it was closed, and neither of us can remember what they wanted for admission. On the right, that little building is actually a motorhome. The blue protruding on its left end is the business end of what was once a bus. While it had a license on the back, there was no date on it. I can assure you it wasn't current.
In the morning we had some local excitement as the annual "sheep crossing" was taking place. Well, sort of. This preserve is located on the river, as you may recall, and every year the owners of this flock of sheep take them across the river to the high country for the summer. They cross the road not far from us (but we missed it, it was done so quietly) and then after munching a bunch of fresh willow and cottonwood saplings, they're herded across the river and up the other side. We had to take the Jeep in for servicing (its second 3,000-mile service since we bought it in February!), so couldn't hang around and actually watch them get wet. And after the Jeep servicing, it was time for some night life. The lower right picture has a sign under the welcome sign that reads, "Drop your frowns in this here bucket and pick 'em up when U leave". We're at the Blazin' M ranch for their dinner and show.
They had the place laid out like a small town, and the shops had some pretty nice (expensive) tourist stuff. And not all of it was from China either. They had a shooting gallery that I couldn't pass up. Two guys running it and both were my age or older. Using a Ruger .44 mag revolver with wax bullets over just the primers. Nice respectable "pop" when the trigger is pulled, and the wax bullet blows a hole in the paper target about 20' away. I hung around for a while and watched, and came back later to spend my $2 and give it a try. The dinner crowd was informal to say the least. The dining room was arrayed like you can see, and on the walls were all kinds of old Western memorabilia.
The show was great fun. Not a single word of profanity, no off-color jokes, just laugh your head off antics and good old fashioned cowboy music. The musicians had all played with some of the big names in the industry, and were not has-beens by any means. Otis the clown had fun with different people in the audience, and kept us in stitches.
Most impressive to me personally was this younger fellow's playing. When asked what kind of music he was going to play to match his perception of the crowd, he said he thought we were a polka loving bunch. Well, that kind of left us out, but we clapped along for a few bars, and then he put his foot up on this hay bale, and did a rendition of Malaguena that had me spellbound. He played the piece in its entirety, and got a rousing applause for his efforts. One of the last songs the group did was Ghost Riders In The Sky -- at least that's what I think it's called. And then outside the windows a strobe light went off and this guy went racing by on his horse. More than once! And there's Barb making like a ghost herself along with some other people we didn't know. There were 16 of us from the TTN preserve at the dinner because we get a discount. We knew two other couples, and had a great time.
Well, remember I mentioned the shooting gallery? 6 shots for $2. My first shot was in the lower left of the 5 ring, the second was lower left of the 8, and the next was a 9, and the other 3 broke the 10 ring. I was happy with the results and didn't think another thing about it. But as I was trying to figure out how to talk Barb into letting me buy some ice cream, low and behold the announcer began offering prizes of ice cream sundaes, and one of the first was for "Blazin' M Ranch Top Gun!" and I got a free ice cream. I did have to share it with Barb, and they did let me pay another $4 for the picture, but hey, if any of my old shooting buddies is reading this..........:-)
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