Easter weekend: Cottonwood, AZ area

We took the scenic route to Cottonwood, going up into the mountains. Tonto National Memorial looked interesting, but not enough time to climb up there.. We shall return. Roosevelt Lake was lovely, the first big body of water we’ve seen in a long time! Then the weather turned and the elevation kept going up. We started in the 70’s in Tucson and got to the 50’s in the mountains. As we watched the elevation go up, the temperature kept going down, and it was raining, then sleeting, then snowing. It was sticking to the ground but not the road. When we hit 7000 feet we took a left to Cottonwood, the right to Winslow was higher still, and cars coming from there had significant snow on them. I was set to go to the Spanish Good Friday service at 6 PM, but it was raining so hard that we didn’t disconnect the car from the camper until morning, so I said my prayers there. We are camped again at Dead Horse Ranch State Park. we were here two years ago. It is delightful. We really like this area.

We woke up to cooler temps and snow capped peaks. We took a ride through the mountains to Prescott (rhymes with biscuit). Up above Cottonwood is Jerome, a quirky little town set on a ledge of the mountain. It was a copper mining town in its day. We took a tour of a ‘Ghost Town’ on the outskirts which was interesting. We hit good snow at high elevation and the road to one of the summits was closed. Prescott was a lovely town and a beautiful area. We found a brewery with live music and had lunch, then wandered Whiskey Row. The Yavapai Courthouse was magnificent, it was prom day and many young folk and their parents were taking pictures. We had our first campfire of the trip, with Jon and Lydia, two Alto folks a few sites down.

Easter Sunday we were up bright and early for 8 AM mass in Sedona. Two years ago we were there for Palm Sunday, which was amazing. This…wasn’t. The church was full, we were in a back room and too far up front to see the TV over our heads. The music left much to be desired. It was still beautiful and Jesus is Risen, so all is good. Some year we’ll go to Sedona on a weekday. It was crazy busy and I still haven’t made it to the rock chapel. We did stop at a geocache at the fire station, there are 50 ‘cache odyssey’ caches, one in each state. I have Maine and NH, and now Arizona. It was a puzzle/gadget cache so it took us a bit. We went out to breakfast in Cottonwood. We drove up to Clarkdale and watched the Celtics in their first playoff game at a brewery we visited last time.

Monday we woke to the news that our dear Pope Francis had died. We hiked in the park, which has the Verde River flowing through it. It was so cool and refreshing to be in trees by the river, with lots of bird songs. In the afternoon we took a 4 hour train ride on the Verde Canyon Railroad. It was a lot of fun. The track originally carried copper from the smelter in Clarkdale to the main line railroad twenty miles north. The track follows the river, either in the canyon or alongside it. There was indoor and outdoor seating, but we were outside for most of the 20 miles out and back. On to Flagstaff tomorrow and then the Grand Canyon!