Camp Verde, AZ...Old Favorites and Something New

Distant Drums

Camp Verde, AZ

October 17, 2022 

Monday's (Oct. 17th) trip from Payson to Camp Verde was a nice drive. It was a short day with less than 65 miles most of which was over the mountains on Hwy 260.  I always enjoy travel day and love taking photos of the highways and byways.

We have stayed at Distant Drums many times since out first visit back in April 2014.  Several of those visits were month long visits so we know the area well.  Some old favorites...

Red Rock State Park: 

Tuesday's adventure found us hiking at Red Rock State Park. It's a pretty little park that is well maintained with friendly staff and volunteers.

We managed a 3+ mile hike by combining the Kisva, Coyote Ridge, Eagle's Nest  and Apache Fire for a nice loop and some elevation gain.  The park (286 acres) is part of the lower Oak Creek Important Birding Area and hosts birds in all season.  We didn't see any birds on our hike, but the Hummingbird Garden at the Visitor Center had a variety of hummers, jays, and sparrows.  The park has two distinct wildlife habitats with informative exhibits that tell about the wildlife that lives in each community.  First, the aquatic community. 

And second, the Pinyon-Juniper community. 

 

There is an open meadow just before the climb up.

P.S. I didn't edit any of these photos...the sky was really that blue!

The views from the ridge made the climb well worth the effort.

Sedona:

After a lazy Wednesday morning, I decided I wanted a T-shirt form Cheers on the north side of town (Hwy 89A).   My sweet husband obliged, so off to Sedona we went.  We know from experience, Sedona is crazy busy in the spring...well, fall is no exception.  It sort of takes the wind out your sails when the only two parking spots you see are time limited...one for 15 minutes and the other for 30 minutes.  We zipped in the 30 min spot, rushed across the street to Cheers for a T-shirt and walked in a few more stores.  Most of the folks in town were sitting on one of the many outdoor patios eating so surprisingly, the stores were not so bad.  

Heading home, we stopped at Son-Silver-West Galleries.  It has been a fun and colorful spot to browse for all these years.  It is a unique shop with a bit of everything from outdoor yard art, popcorn seasoning, and souvenirs, to expensive art, pottery, mesquite furniture and handmade rugs.    

 

Schnebly Hill Road: 

Thursday was the day we chose to do some off-roading.  It has been a long time since Pearl has had an adventure.  Schnebly Hill is an 11.8 mile trail from point to point.  We have done it a couple of times starting from I 17 and driven down the hill so Thursday, we decided to go up.  We passed several Pink Jeeps ( tours ) during the first couple of miles.  They stop at an overlook closer to town, turn around and head back down.  Once past their overlook stop, we pretty much had the rest of the trail to ourselves.  The trail is lumpy and bumpy but easy.  

Thank you Joe !

The views are humongous....

all the way to Scenebly Hill Vista.

Lunch with a view.  You can see the trail we just climbed on the left side of the photo.

   

The rest of the trail to I 17 is gravel and lined with ponderosa pines.

Seven years ago, there was a lake here.  Poor geese don't have any water !

Montezuma Castle National Monument:

I can't believe we never included Montezuma Castle in any of our other visits to Camp Verde.  This morning (Saturday), we fixed that and made a stop on the way to Basha's Grocery.  Like Tonto NM, Montezuma was also established as a National Monument in 1906. Unlike Tonto, these dwellings were built a couple of hundred years earlier in the 1100s.  

This 20 room "apartment", 5 story dwelling housed 35 to 50 people and was built high up in an alcove on a limestone cliff in Verde Valley.  The walls were made of limestone rocks from the local area and held together with clay.  I found it fascinating that adobe was used to coat and seal the outer walls. 

Large support beams of sycamore wood and cross beams made from dry branches, twigs, grasses and reeds covered with several inches of mud both completed the ceiling and the floor for the next level.  A second dwelling, excavated in 1934 was located "around the corner" from Montezuma Castle.  It had 45-50 rooms and housed about 100 people.  Sadly, it is not so well preserved because a fire around 1400 destroyed most of the interior.  Montezuma Castle is located along Beaver Creek...a reliable source of running water through the canyon.  The Sinagua people who built the dwelling and lived in the valley until the early 1400s, were primarily farmers and relied heavily on corn.   

In the late 1800s, Montezuma Castle became a popular tourist site.  Unfortunately, some saw it as a site to preserve while others saw it as a treasure chest.  Visitors were able to climb a series of three ladders and enter the dwelling until 1951.  That year, both visitor safety and concerns for the structure were addressed and the ladders were removed.  Today, only park rangers and other personnel are allowed to enter the Castle. 

A diorama was created by the national Park Service's Laboratory in Washington, DC to show and interpret what the structure looked like inside.  The day the ladders came down in 1951, the diorama made its debut.  Today, 71 years later, the model still serves its initial purpose and acts as an artifact of the park's history.

The paved walk that loops to the viewing area for the Castle and Beaver Creek is lined with Arizona sycamore trees.  They flourished 63 million years ago when Arizona's climate was cool and moist. 

Today, these magnificent trees can only be found in riparian corridors.  Growing up to 80feet tall, it consistently sheds white, brown and green bark. 

The main beams for the Castle were hoisted 80 feet above the valley floor.  Some were estimated to weigh more than two tons !

A little bit of color along the walk this morning.

I have one more post to write from Camp Verde so stay tuned.

A little hint of what's next after I sort thru a kazillion photos...

Until next time, 

HAPPY TRAILS !

Payson...

Oxbow RV Park

October 17, 2022

Payson, AZ

Dover in glamping mode!

We enjoyed our week stay at Oxbow RV Park.  Being a trip we put together quickly, I didn't spend much time researching choices for parks.  Trip Advisor listed three parks in Payson (one of them was a mobile home park) so I went with the one that had the most stars.  Oxbow turned out to be a good choice.  We had full hook-up and 50 amp.  The sites were level, gravel, and a bit narrow, but we had NO neighbors on either side the entire week.  The big pluses were friendly park owners, very quiet days and nights, and the amazing dark sky.  The biggest downside was how inconsistent and slow our Verizon router was.  We felt safe thanks to the locals who kept a watchful eye out for the place...quite serious about the job I might add.

Our neighbor across the road...

And Sally was on her a game as well keeping a watchful eye out for the neighbors.  

Friday mid-morning, Joe and I made a stop at the Rim Country Museum.  The Gila County Historical Society operates the museum and it is only open on Friday and Saturday.  Historical  buildings, artifacts and exhibits depicting the culture and history of Payson are on display.  My two favorite exhibits...the rodeo and Zane Grey.

Payson is a small town in northern Gila County and is best known for having the "world's oldest continuing rodeo" established in 1884.  Back in the day, it had a reputation for being a rough and tumble town.  Local ranchers would get together to "entertain" themselves by demonstrating their cowhand skills and showing off their horses.  

Horse races became the favorite event in early rodeos. Many people consider Payson the Birthplace of the Modern Day Rodeo.  

The greatest storyteller of the American West was Zane Grey.  He was born in 1872 to a family of pioneers with stories to tell.  He was motivated by his own family's stories and the stories of many other pioneer homesteaders.  His romance with and marriage to Dolly was the inspiration needed for many adventure-romance novels to follow.  Zane Grey first came to  the Mogollon Rim near Payson in 1918 and by 1921 his original cabin, which he called the hunting lodge, was completed.  Zane Grey became the best Western author of all time and for most of his teens, 20s and 30s, he had at least one novel in the top ten every year.  Zane Grey wrote to live and lived to write...surely a balance rarely attained...until his untimely death at age 67 of heart failure in 1939.  

When all the posthumous works were finally published many years later, he left the world with almost 90 books in print.  The Dude Fire in 1990 burned the original cabin to the ground.  

      

Saturday was damp, rainy, stormy, cloudy and chilly.  So we decided it would be a good day to have lunch out and take a drive to Pine, AZ a few miles north on the Beeline Hwy. 

El Rancho was our (my) lunch choice...given a choice, I will always pick Mexican.  I had the best, most mouthwatering fried bread tacos ever.   

  

After lunch we headed north on AZ 87 for almost 13 miles passing thru Strawberry to the tiny community of Pine.  It was cloudy, but the promised rains held off until we returned home. 

Our destination was the PIEbar.  I LOVE pie ! The full name is PIEbar AZ-Empanadas, Cocktails, Coffee, and more.  

   

There was a line when we arrived.  Instructions were to look over the menu and be ready to order when you enter the small counter/kitchen.  It smelled heavenly and was very hard making a decision.  I ordered a pineapple upside down empanada and Joe ordered a Molten Chocolate one.  We were still full from lunch and had already decided to take them home for supper.   I was a bit surprised by the crowd...lots of laughter and conversations from the outside tables and chairs...and realized this small out of the way business has really taken off.  They have been there for a little over two years and last year yelp phoenix named them the best empanadas in the state.  

Everyday they make the crust and fillings for sweet empanadas and savory empanadas like chicken pot pie and and green chili pork.  

The ones we had were yummy !

Did I mention the drive?  Beautiful towering Ponderosa Pines line the highway for miles and miles.   

In fact, when googling about the area, I discovered that Arizona has the largest contiguous stand of Ponderosa pine forest in the world.  That's pretty cool !  The forest stretches from near Flagstaff along the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains regions.  

Until next time, 

 HAPPY TRAILS !