Fourth of July

For the fourth we drove up to Prescott (about 50 miles west of Sedona I believe).

We are still amazed at the variety of climates here in Arizona. We started in 102 degrees, humid, sunny and hot! Along the way we encountered some storms and the temp dropped dramatically to 62 degrees! In just 20 more miles we were back into sunshine and 86!

Prescott is in the mountains and has the feel of a mid-western town with all the trees and architecture. We had a picnic at the Prescott Frontier Days and walked around downtown.

We left in the late afternoon to head back home for fireworks in Chandler at Tumbleweed Park near our house. It was a fun day but we were exhausted!

We were a little bummed when we realized the desert is too hot and dry to allow regular folk to shoot off fireworks. It never occurred to us until that afternoon that we hadn’t seen any fireworks for sale or heard anyone shooting them off. Bummer!

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Roosevelt Lake and Globe, AZ

For Father’s Day we took a day trip through Globe to Roosevelt Lake and Dam.

I personally did not see anything remotely interesting in Globe but maybe I wasn’t looking for the right thing?

Roosevelt Lake however was beautiful! We climbed up to see the ruins at Tonto National Monument but the bees were so bad we couldn’t get too close. It was quite a hike and pretty hot out but Evan was a trooper. The kids have their mini camelbacks and love them! We had a picnic by the water and drove around a bit more before heading home.

The drive back was very rustic! A single lane, winding gravel road on the edge of a mountain for about 30 miles! It took 2 hours but was beautiful. Oh, and we discovered Caitlin gets carsick :( poor thing got sick twice!

Here are the photos...enjoy (you can view all the pots in the slide show at once by clicking on the images).

Vulture City Ghost Town

We spent most of Saturday in one of the best preserved ghost towns in the state. Not only do they have several buildings but they also have several items in the buildings. Such as furniture, stoves, pots and pans, tools, machinery and so on. It is a mining town that was discovered by a man named Henry Wickenburg in 1863. It has been unoccupied since WWII. You have to sign a release before walking around as they let you go anywhere you want and touch anything you want and most of the buildings could collapse the rest of the way any second of any day.

Not only did we go into this building (Assay Office and Shotgun shack built in 1884) but we even went upstairs. They say that there is around $600,000 worth of gold in the walls as they built it with rock from the mine.

This is where the guys with shotguns hung out.

Make my feet hurt just looking at them. But then again they are a hundred years old.

This was the machine shop. I'm standing on a gigantic diesel engine that was built in Germany, sent here and assembled where it sits in 1904.

Time for a quick stop on the potty. Sitting on 100+ year old poo.

Apartment house for the miners and yes we walked through this one to.

Evan found a car he likes.

Folgers in a glass jar.

Kitchen where the miners ate.

Ghost Towns Of Phoenix

Tomorrow we are heading to one of the most well preserved ghost towns in this area: Vulture, AZ.

It is a ghost town in the real sense of the word, not commercialized, only the owners/caretakers live there and things were just left lying around...pretty cool!

It started as a gold-mining town in the 1880's

We'll take LOTS of pictures and post them Sunday sometime.

Happy Birthday to Me...

Danny, the sweet guy that he is, planned a special trip for us to celebrate my 31st birthday (you knew that right?).

On Saturday we drove to Summerhaven (on Mt Lemmon North of Tucson). It only took about 90 mins to get to Tucson and another HOUR to get up to Summerhaven (that's 26 miles).

The temperature was about 73 degrees and it was sunny, a little breezy...beautiful. We hiked just a tiny bit.

Here are some photos

Windy Point Lookout

Evan DID NOT like being anywhere near the edge unless Danny was holding him.

No, I was not good enough, he wouldn't even pose for a picture with me :(

But THIS was okay!

Seriously...and yes, they really were at the edge of nothing! Good thing I trust Danny.

Here's a better shot to put it in perspective ...

We stopped for a picnic lunch...you can see all the dead, burned trees in the background. This isn't what it looked like everywhere but it's a sad reminder of the fire here in 2003. They lost a lot of the town of Summerhaven so what we saw was not nearly as beautiful as it once was.

Danny finding a geocache at the Ski Valley Lodge just a bit up the mountain from Summerhaven.

Me and my babies :) at Ski Valley

Looking down on Summerhaven (from Ski Valley, on the way back down)

NOTE: There are several more photos but Blogger is giving me some trouble so I'll upload them later today.