Camp Verde, Arizona

We beat a hasty retreat from Bullhead City on Thursday, hoping to make the long steep climb to Kingman before the day became too warm. We needn’t have worried – it just never got very hot. By the time we got to Flagstaff we began to see snow on the mountain peaks and plenty of autumn color on the trees.

Although we’ve made many visits to Camp Verde, we had never taken the Verde Canyon Railroad into the otherwise inaccessible Verde River Canyon. This time we decided to loosen our grip on the budget and take the trip to enjoy the fall colors. The trip begins in Clarkdale, where we were once again introduced to Senator William A. Clark, the Butte copper baron we first “met” in Beatty, NV. And, yes, Clarkdale was named for him. He purchased the copper mine part-way up the mountain in Jerome and established the railroad to transport the ore north to meet the Santa Fe Railroad 38 miles away at Drake.

The weather was absolutely perfect for the trip and we spent the entire four-hour excursion in an open car rather than in the Pullman car. The tracks follow the Verde River, very calm and placid at the moment, but capable of turning into a torrent given enough snow melt near Flagstaff or summer monsoons upstream. We could see the damage done to trees by a recent flash flood.

For those who have done leaf-peeping in New England, the foliage colors in Arizona would be a disappointment, tending mostly to the golds of cottonwoods and sycamores, along with some amber and browns of smaller trees and bushes. But none of the oranges and reds you’d see with hardwoods.

Wildlife was in short supply except for a redtail hawk and what might have been a golden eagle. We did see a bald eagle nest on the red cliffs but it’s not quite the season for them to be nesting and last season’s fledges would already have flown the coop. The train was held up twice along the way by cows wandering along the tracks. Visible from the tracks is a cliff dwelling, once home to a pre-Colombian people now called Sinaqua by anthropologists. They lived in the area around 1100 A.D. It isn’t known what they called themselves so modern scientists have dubbed them Sin (without) Agua (water). The blackened ceiling of the cave can be seen from the train.

As we passed along the (mostly) red cliffs, the guides pointed out a number of rock formations which have acquired names. I suspect they were named by various guides over the years to keep the passengers amused. Not only do you need a very active imagination to “see” some of these forms but additional assistance might be required – say a few hours too long in the hot sun without a hat, some recreational drugs or a sharp rap to the temple with a blunt object. The named rocks are pictured here in their very own album.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we met fellow Fulltimers, Pat and Ed, for lunch inhistoric Old Town Cottonwood, preceded by the ladies checking out two local craft fairs. We’re hoping to see Pat and Ed again at a rally in December somewhere in the Phoenix area.

A mad dash to Sedona capped off our short stay in Camp Verde. Being Monday, of course we had to drop by a Beall’s Outlet for a senior discount on our purchases. We didn’t “find a dot, save a lot” but I did get two pairs of casual knit pants. The Goodwill is in the same plaza so we stopped in for a snoop through the book section. And then a bit further down the road we stopped in at a fabulous bead shop called The Bead Garden where I found the daisy spacers I needed and a bunch of other stuff that couldn’t be resisted. The bead stash has reached epic portions.

Next week’s report will be from Tucson where we hope it will be somewhat warmer and a little less windy.