Crown King

Destination today: Crown King for lunch

Crown King can be found on a remote forestry road about 24 miles from I-17 south of Camp Verde.



Here is the restaurant we are about to have lunch in.

Ahhhh..... but when we go inside it looks just wonderful and lunch was great.

Here are Larry, Ron and Dick awaiting their meal.



Our good friends Barb and Dick from Colfax Washington, we met them down in Florida last year and hit it off right away, we like doing a lot of the same things.

Walked on over to the General store and found the Post Office, Dick bought a shirt that said he survived the ride into Crown King.

Here is the street outside the General Store, was quite a busy day in town.

The Saloon.

How appropriate, here is the church steeple.

On our way home we found a couple cactus blooming, this one will be beautiful when all the blooms are open.

Liked the split in this rock.

Next stop on the return was the town of Cleator, says it has a population of 11 and one meteor but have to do some research regarding the meteor. We did however stop at the local saloon and wet our whistle.

Now I am really wondering what they do grow in Cleator besides these mushrooms.

Another blooming hedgehog.

Sharon says this is her new house, note it has a satelite dish for Larry and must have a stove as the stovepipe is coming out of the window.

A fun day of exploring, you never know what you find when you get off the highway.

The Grand Canyon

Yesterday we went for a drive with Larry and Sharon to the Grand Canyon as they had never been there before. The day was wonderful and the scenery and weather spectacular, it was 77 degrees with a slight breeze, just perfect.
Asusual I took to many pictures but here a just a few for a taste.

We only had time to do the Rim Canyon as it takes a good 2 and a half hours from Camp Verde where we are parked.



One never gets tired of all the rock formations and colors.

Looking west

Oh yes we were there


Now here if you had a extra strong magnifing glassyou could find the chopper, I got just to excited at the photo op to take a good picture.

Looking east.

Ron and I went for a little walk around the rim and there was one good photo spot but my knees shook as we got pretty close to the edge.






The rapids in the mighty Colorado.



More pictures.


This is the start of the walk down the Bright Angel Trail, Ron and I have put that on our to do list for another year.


Mather Point, last rock picture.

And then the elk came out, watching the people get their pictures was quite fun.

Great day.

Goldfield and the Apache Trail

Today was a long but very good day, we took Larry and Sharon Bennetts for a ride to Goldfield and around the Apache Trail.
Here they are in front of the Mercantile.


Goldfield is set right across from the Supersition Mountains, which are always wonderful to look at.


There goes the little train around the desert.

This old truck looks like has seen better days but at least it got a nice resting place.


Lunch stop was a picnic on Canyon Lake.

Then it was off to Tortilla Flats which was just tooooo busy and we had a very overpriced ice cream.

The little lizard in the picture was grey when I first started taking his picture but changed colors right in front of my eyes, pretty neat.

A beautiful hedgehog cactus, not as many flowers out as I expected.

Looking out into the valley.

The bridge by the Roosevelt Dam.

This little fellow was getting some sun.

Last stop was the cliff dwellings at Tonto, we will be going back this fall to walk on up to them.

Got back into Phoenix about five thirty and had a great dinner at the Texas Roadhouse, good was delicious.

Usery Park, Saguaro Lake and Fireworks

We had a very full and busy day, starting off with a visit to Camping World and then looking at two RV Parks that we thought about staying in next fall.
After that we headed north west of Phoenix to the Usery Regional Park where we had a picnic lunch.

Here you can see the Octillo blooming in the Saguaro. We found 4 different cactus that are all just starting to bloom.



The Octillo

Just up behind our picnic spot

After lunch we drove up to Saguaro Lake, here is a picture of the Marina and the dam in the background.

Sometimes it is hard to believe there is this much water so close to the desert.

Back to town and off to watch the Reds take on the Texas Rangers.

After the game a lovely display of fireworks, I got some great shots, here are just a few.

Great Day in the sunny south, about 30 degrees celcius