Journeys: Prescott, Arizona - Sightseeing and Hiking

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Prescott, Arizona - Sightseeing and Hiking

Roger and I decided to explore some new territory in Arizona for Labor Day weekend. We headed up to Prescott, AZ on Monday morning and spent the early afternoon enjoying Prescott's Faire On The Square Arts and Crafts Show. The tree filled Courthouse Square at the center of town was a great place to relax in the shade, and the surrounding stores, bars, and restaurants made for a lively downtown scene. After lunch at Prescott Brewing Company, we drove to scenic Watson Lake to hike several of the shoreline trails. Monsoon thunderstorms surrounded us, but we enjoyed sunshine at the lake for most of the afternoon.

Watson Lake

Watson Lake

After a great breakfast at Raven Cafe, we made the quick drive over to Prescott National Forest to hike Thumb Butte, a distinctive rock formation visible from downtown Prescott. The short loop trail passed through a Ponderosa pine forest, then ascended up and around a ridge which overlooked the entire Prescott Valley.

Ponderosa pine at Thumb Butte

Roger hiking at Thumb Butte

Alligator juniper

Prickly pear cactus fruit

After our hike, we took a scenic drive to historic Jerome, an old mining town that is now an artist community and tourist destination. We visited a few of the art galleries and enjoyed lunch before heading down the mountain to our final stop of the day, Tuzigoot National Monument. Tuzigoot is a reconstruction of a 110 room community, built by the Sinagua people between 1100 and 1400 AD. The ruin sits on a hill overlooking the Verde River, and the visitor center features numerous artifacts from the excavation of the area. Standing above the ruin, with the quiet stillness of the valley broken by distant thunder, was a memorable experience for me.

Tuzigoot National Monument

Tuzigoot National Monument

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess