Jerome, Tuzigoot

Finally! Two months after our summer vacation, I am actually getting around to documenting it. Our goal this year was to visit everything of interest in Arizona so that when Ryan graduates we won't have any need to sight-see in AZ. We would come to AZ purely to visit family.

We stayed at a cabin just outside of Prescott and took daytrips to our different destinations. Our first day sight-seeing included going to Jerome and Tuzigoot.

Getting to Jerome was quite interesting. The mileage from Prescott to Jerome is pretty insignificant, but it took us nearly an hour to get there. The last few miles of the trip were heading directly up Mingus Mountain on very tight switchbacks. Not a pleasant trip, especially when the kids in the back start saying they feel like throwing up. Even in the front seat, I was getting really sick of all the turns. There were several points along the road where I actually thought we might slip off the edge of the road and fall a thousand feet to our death. The road was incredibly narrow and I did not like being on it at all! I'm sure Ryan was just laughing at my silliness the entire time.

Once we got to Jerome, we went to the old miner "museum". I actually think it was a junkyard that was organized a bit and people wanted to see all the old "junk" that was there so they started charging people admission. Either way, it does have a nice view of the valley below.

   This little girl enjoyed her ride in the backpack. She started out resting on Dad's shoulder and chewing her hat strap, but she quickly realized that Dad makes a great pillow. That is how she spent the rest of the time at the Jerome museum.

 The boys had been really interested in carving with their pocketknives during this vacation, so when they saw this carving they got really excited. 

 

On the way out of the museum, we saw this car. Jayke was so excited about it that he wanted us to stop the car and run over there to get a picture. Must be a boy thing...I don't get it.

After we got back to the actual town of Jerome, we were driving down the streets, just completely amazed at how all the buildings are hanging off the edge of the mountain. Seriously some scary buildings there. This picture pretty much sums up the entire town. Tall buildings with a few feet until tall retaining walls which connect to the next level of tall buildings. Forget having a yard, you're lucky to have a back porch!

On the way to the state museum, we saw an old car that had gone off the road into a ravine...that was still there. I guess there just wasn't any way to pull it out so they just left it there. From the state museum, you can see just how crazy all the buildings are. They are literally just sitting on the edge of the mountain. We learned at the state museum that there have been several landslides in the town. The mountain was being mined and it is even on a fault line, so the chances of having your house destroyed were pretty big.

 
You can see the storms just rolling in over the mountains. They were incredible! They seemed to just appear out of nowhere.

And the views from the town were spectacular. I can see why people still want to live there, even if it is a crazy, sliding down the mountain, halfway into the mountain, little tourist town.

 

After Jerome, we drove a few more miles and saw the Tuzigoot National Monument. It was pretty much what I expected: a bunch of Native American ruins.

What I didn't expect was how high they were. The ruins sat on a little hill, but even from the little hill, you can see everything around it.

 

It's location was right next to the river, so everywhere around it was covered in huge trees and green bushes. Ethan kept telling us how he wants to live somewhere that has lots of green.

 

 Jayke just wanted to take pictures of everything. Even if he already had twenty pictures of it, he wanted more. There was a point during our vacation that I told him to put the camera away. He was getting a little shutter-happy.

Up next: Montezuma Castle and Well...