The Verde Canyon Railroad

I have decided to divide my recounting of our Thanksgiving/Anniversary trip to Jerome into three parts: The Verde Canyon Railroad Ride, Jerome, and the weird Ghost Town. I thought I would start with our ride on the Verde Canyon Railroad. This was a trip that took us through Arizona's second largest canyon by rail. The trip includes three dominant themes: breathtaking vistas, musak , and senior citizens. It was a four hour trip and was quite comfortable. We rode first class, which meant we were entitled to about 50 cc's of champagne and a muffin from BJ's. There was some narration too, which was pretty informative. There were open-air viewing cars available too, which were nice to take pictures from. Overall, it was a pretty cool ride. It was really relaxing.

This is the engine that pulled the train. Though not visible in the picture, it has a big eagle painted on it. This is because Verde Canyon is home to a pair of nesting bald eagles and seasonal home to migrating bald and golden eagles. We got to see a bald eagle circling above the canyon. Soon thereafter, the radio played "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood. That's the "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free..." song.

This is what I think of that song. (see above photo.)
This is a really expensive, isolated house in the canyon. Some college professors from California bought it for $650K. I think that's a good deal. The place looks awesome.

The Verde River.
This is the train snaking along ahead of us.
Into the tunnel.
Here are some views from along our trip.




The line ends in a place called Perkinsville. It think maybe one dude lives there with a shitload of cats.
There were so many cats on that freezer thing. We wanted to pet them.
This little fella wanted to get in.
This is the old train depot. From here we turned around and went back. We actually saw the cows humping on the way home. It was a good trip.

Siphon Draw

November 18th was Erin and I's one year anniversary. It has been a busy year indeed! Phew! It's certainly not slowing down any for us either...but it is cooling down. That's a great thing because, as you can probably tell from the blog, we like to go hiking. Last weekend we bought new hiking boots and headed back to the Superstition Mountains, this time to the Lost Dutchman State park, and started breaking the boots in.

The mountains always seem so close...until you try to walk up to them!

Erin captured this picture of the moon on our way back down the trail from the canyon. It looks like a shot from another planet.
The Superstitions...



















































Here's what Ishmael was doing while we were hiking. He does this ALOT! and it stinks so badly. He likes the new litter box with the rim because it gives him leverage.






For Thanksgiving, we went to Jerome, AZ and took a train ride through the Verde Canyon. That will be the subject of our next blog entry.











This is a glamorized picture of our new car that I copied off the Internet. I will get a real picture soon, I swear.

The Superstition Wilderness

You know a place has to be awesome with a name like the Superstition Wilderness. The Superstition Wilderness is part of Tonto National Forest and is made up of a section of the Superstition Mountains. If you have heard of the Superstitions, it probably because they are thought to be the home of the Lost Dutchman Mine, one of America's most enduring hidden treasure legends.

After spending out previous two hiking trips at South Mountain in Phoenix, Erin and I decided to go somewhere new, so we went to REI and bought a book of day hikes by a dude named Cosmic Ray. It's a rad little book. We were originally going to head up to the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest again, but we were pressed for time and the book suggested a trail called the hieroglyphic trail in the Superstitions, so we decided to check it out.

The trail head was in Apache Junction, which is on the other side of Mesa (which is where Jimmy Eat World is from... Mesa, I mean - FYI). It's pretty cool out there. There are lots of new houses, but not the boring, square subdivision boxes we've seen pretty much everywhere else in the valley.

The name of the trail - the hieroglyphic trail, is really a misnomer. Hieroglyphics were Egyptian, and these drawings, called petroglyphs, were done by Hohokam Native Americans. We had seen petroglyphs at South Mountain and Hayden's Butte, but these were the most impressive by far. We hiked to the end of the trail, where there was a stagnant pool of water. The petroglyphs were on the walls surrounding the pool.
This pool was pretty nasty. There were tons of bees around it, but it supported a lot of greenery, flowers and butterflies.

At the end of the trail and in sight of the petroglyphs, Erin and I decided to sit down in the shade and have a snack. Little did we know that our Clif Bars and apples would smell so appealing to a bunch of really bold antelope squirrels! These little fellas came from all around the area to spy on us, chase each other around, and hope for a dropped peanut. They're really cute and funny to watch.
This little dude thought he was such a clever spy...


From the spot where we made squirrel friends, we could see this balanced rock off in the distance. We're going to have to go up there and check it out some day.




This type of cactus is called a teddy bear cholla, I think.

This is a close up of a young saguaro cactus.
This is what they look like when they've been growing for a while!

Changing the subject, I don't think I've mentioned that we got a new car. It's a 2007 Toyota Matrix M Theory. It's rad. It feels so good to have a nice new car with a nice new warranty. I'll provide pictures of it here soon!

Adios!

South Mountain Part Deuce

We went to South Mountain again, only this time we went hiking. It was about 4 miles roundtrip, but I thought it seemed longer than that. We had fun exploring the desert mountain along a trail and got to see more up close than when we took our last bike ride. Lots of cactuses (I refuse to call them cacti), dirt, rocks, lizards and mountain bike riders. And of course, the always awesome view of the whole Phoenix area, which I don't think will ever get old. We also saw some Native American petroglyphs which was awesome. It brought me back to my days of wanting to be an archaeologist.