The rest of the trip--revisiting old sights

The first several in in Jerome. I parked at the bottom and hiked up the road to the site of my first Arizona home on a point called Sunshine Hill that sat north and a bit east of the actual town of Jerome. I left there when I was ten so there have been many changes but a few things are still the same. Again, notes for each shot will run down along the column of photos.

1)  Okay, here we are where the house we lived in once sat. The cement walls supported the wooden water tanks--like huge barrels--that fed most of the town's water supply. There were four of them. The metal pipe was the corner of our yard.

2) Next is the road up the hill. Those cement 'pillows' paving a portion were there in the 1940s! The site of the previous shot is just above the curve of the road near the center.

3) Next is a selfie taken in the old yard area. Part of the mining terraces are in the background


4) Now we are up above town on "The Narrow Gauge" road which actually was mostly the road bed for the first railroad built to the Jerome mines about the turn of the last century. That road goes around Woodchute Mountain and past Perkinsville, where the scenic train turns around, and ends up in Chino Valley north of Prescott. Woodchute also shows some areas of red sandstone and one marks where the road goes.

5) From there we turn about 90 degrees to look out across the Verde Valley to the north east. In the background is Black Mountain and a bit of the red rocks up the Verde Canyon. Two white structures at the Clarkdale cement plant are barely visible in the far right edge.

6) We skip down to Clarkdale  On the left is the old high school where I went to 8th, 9th and 10th grade. That building is now a museum dedicated totally to copper, and full of neat artifacts and trivia most of us had never heard before! Well worth a visit should you be in that area. Across the street the arch was an opening to an open breezeway between what was once the Post Office and some town offices. Neither are there now.

 7) Past the arch, you go about a block north and look down into Bitter Creek Canyon. There is the day's Verde River Scenic making up to depart shortly after lunch. The canyon between has greatly overgrown with mesquite and other small trees and bushes since I was there long ago and rode horses and mules up it to go to the mountains. Again you can see Black Mountain in the distance.

8) Finally a very blurry shot of my two old friends, Arlene (Blahnik) Sandoval and Evelyn (Graves) Morales, Evelyn closest to the camera, taken at the reunion. The red boards on the wall held the names of the classmates from each class covered by the reunion who had passed away. Some of the names were a shock to find. and one reason why the three of us probably won't be going back again--too many are gone. Still not sure how we got so old looking! I managed to avoid getting in front of a camera. Except the selfie, anyway. That's just to say, "I was here."

Remember click on the first photo and you can scroll thru full screen sized views.