We did some quality "wandering about" today. The morning began with a nice walk around the three small lakes here at Dead Horse Ranch State Park. The park is noted for it's bird watching and today was our chance to see many new and colorful varieties we had never seen.
Our next adventure was visiting Tuzigoot National Monument, a Hopi pueblo. The 110 home village sits atop a hill overlooking the Verde River Valley.
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| Looking down onto the homes of the pueblo. |
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| A nice walk up to the top of the pueblo. |
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| President Roosevelt made this one of the first National Monuments. |
It was another interesting time to see how folks lived in 1040 AD. I liked being inside the complete homes at the top of the pueblo. Terri asked how families could live in such small areas. I measured off a larger home and told her it was not that much smaller than our 340 square foot motorhome. We seem to be living quite well in our small space. I imagine they also adapted to it as well. The thick walls made the rooms much cooler than the outside air.
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| A service station in downtown Clarkdale. Still looks a little like the 1950's. |
After visiting the pueblo we drove the windy road through Clarkdale up the mountain to Jerome. The town is built into the 30 degree incline of the side of a mountain at an elevation above 5,000 feet. They really knew how to build switch back roads back in those days.
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| Looking down from Jerome. |
Jerome is one of those towns that has saved itself from becoming a ghost town by becoming an artist/ tourist town. When the mine closed 5,000 people left town. That was 90% of the towns population. Now the town has rebounded and looks alive.
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| That's Jerome hanging on the side of the mountain. |
Not all of the town has survived. A few building have crumbled or slid away.
The good news was they still had an ice cream shop. We had our chocolate mint cone and life is good.
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| Selfie. |
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