The Big Valley

Our latest camp was high over little Jerome AZ, and the grand Verde River valley. This is about as far north as you can go in AZ and still be semi-warm. Winter starts with a vengeance in a couple days, and I don't want to surrender too soon to the moonscape of the Mojave.

The red rock cliffs of Sedona glow at sunset. I could enjoy this right from my trailer door:

I've never actually visited Sedona. I cling to my geo-bigotries as tightly as the old mining town of Jerome clings to the side of Woodchute Mountain. Jerome wasn't as tourist-kitsch as I feared; only the main buildings along tourist central are over-restored.

I took the dogs on a short hike, right from town. I was in a foul mood,  because of van maintenance problems, poor comportment by one of the dogs, and the claustrophobic road layout. If that weren't bad enough, we soon encountered volcanic rubble, my least favorite geologic layer. It had taken four attempts to find this miserable, gnarly road.

It went through a remarkable residential neighborhood, barely visible from the main highway. Most of the funky wooden houses were lived in. They weren't even painted, and the wooden siding was weathered by Arizona's sun and aridity into the color of a gray/brown cat. The yards, if small cliffs full of stickers can be called such, were full of esoterica evocative of the old mining days. Such junk was charming as a part of someone's home, although it wouldn't interest me in a tourist shop.

After hitting a dead end, I surrendered. Believe it or not today was a good outing, despite the fact that just about everything went wrong. I had been soothed by this funky little neighborhood.