Time In Verde Valley

After such a busy day at the Verde Canyon Railroad, we dawdled a bit the next morning but eventually we headed out for Tuzigoot near Camp Verde. Tuzigoot is an ancient hilltop pueblo. I must admit I did not climb up to although there is a 1/3 mile loop trail that takes you around and through the pueblo but instead spent a good while with the exhibits in the Tuzigoot museum which show various artifacts with presentations about them and the Sinagua who lived here. There is an intriguing display showing what a room in the pueblo might have been like.Lest I forget, there is also a nice gift shop where of course I got another ball cap. This one is a nice light olive color with a rattlesnake on the front and Tuzigoot on the back. That night we explored the restaurants of Cottonwood eventually settling on Strombolli's which has an excellent spinach dip with batter fried mushrooms and zucchini.

The next day we went to another historical monument, Montezuma Castle. This is a limestone cliff with a dwelling built into it, a sort of high rise apartment building tucked into a cliff. After visiting the center here, we went on to Ft Verde State Historic Park. This site was established in 1871 replacing an earlier camp one mile north of the present site. The primary reason for its existence was as a staging base for military operations in the area protecting the settlers in the region. The small administration building contains displays of soldiers uniforms and equipment from that era. The officers' quarters and adjacent buildings show life as it was then and the website has some nifty short videos, sort of a virtual tour.

From here we went back to Cottonwood and tried the Black Bear Diner. We no longer remember what restaurant we thought was there but it had apparently vanished and been replaced, very recently, by the Black Bear Diner. The place was nice and the corn muffins so fantastic we later returned and got some to go! It appears to be one of the newer locations of a west coast chain.

At some point the day we went to Tuzigoot, we made reservations for a Pink Jeep tour in Sedona for June 3rd, the same day we were visiting my sister there. So we were up about 4 am in order to be ready to leave around 6:30 to be in plenty of time for our scheduled 8 am Red Rock Range tour. This is an easy ride with great views of the red rock formations. It also covers an area I never saw much of when I was younger and visiting my grandmother at her Crescent Moon Ranch near Oak Creek Crossing.

After the tour we went nearby to visit with my sister and see what all she has done with the house. Coming to the house was one of the main reasons for renting a car as this driveway would simply be impossible with the RV. Suffice it to say that many UPS drivers won't take their big brown trucks of happiness up there either!

It was the first time I had been to the house since my mother had passed and it was wonderful to see a lot of things that mostly just live in my memory. I brought several things back with me, most particularly a small figurine my mother made long ago of me playing my flute. Being made out of simple Plaster of Paris it has suffered over the years and part of the flute has gone. I was perhaps 12 or so at the time so it is about sixty years old. It now lives in our credenza behind a glass door sitting on a small doily crocheted by my great grandmother Lida Deshler Willson Kellogg. I sometimes debate having it restored but then decide the damage is part of its history.

The following day my son Mark was coming up from his home north of Phoenix to visit for a while. He arrived about 11 and we sat in Wolf for a while chatting and then, when Wolf started to get too hot ... his air conditioning can't quite cope with the hottest parts of the day in Arizona ... we headed to Cottonwood and the Black Bear Diner where we sat and visited in cool comfort for several hours. While we were waiting to be seated I spotted something I just had to have ... no, not another ball cap this time. It was a pair of plush stuffed hugging bears, about 8 inches tall, which now live on my bookshelves.


Our final day here in the Verde Valley was a down day for laundry, returning the rental car, picking up some prescription refills, shopping at WalMart ... the sort of things one has to do in life whether you are home or on the road. Of course Geoff also ended up spending some time fighting with the toilet/black tank system!