We arise on the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend. The day is
fair and after some initial packing, we head downstairs for breakfast at the
Forest Villas Hotel. We have an enjoyable meal. We try to drink a lot of water
since we are heading down toward the Valley of the Sun and hotter temperatures.
After a leisurely morning, including some nice piano music
in the lobby, we pack the car and head out for Wickenburg, AZ, about 65 miles
away. I am a little puzzled that the GPS says it will take us an hour and a
half to get there. There are no red traffic marks on the GPS’ map. What gives?
We quickly find out! As we pass through Prescott, we turn
south just before the Court House area. (It is a lovely little neighborhood of
picturesque houses.) Then the road starts to climb just
as we leave the town proper. The road twists and turns just south
of town. The posted speed limit is 25 MPH.
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| Hills South of Prescott |
We drive over a pass and start descending. I am thinking how nice it is that there is very little
traffic when we come upon a stretch of road with about a dozen motorcycles
parked on the opposite side of the road, facing towards us, and also one
Arizona Highway Patrol Car. A man is carrying a woman, completely conscious,
toward the Patrol Car. He puts her down to get her into the car and it is clear
that something is wrong with one of her legs. As we look at the scene, I can’t
help thinking that there was an accident, but with the steepness of the verge, it could have been a lot
worse.
We continue descending, and after about 20 miles of pretty
slow driving, we bottom out near the town of Wilhoit. We have made it to the
desert and it's getting hot. At the start of the day, we were at
about 5,400 ft. elevation. We are now just a bit above 2,000. As we drive into
town, the temperature is north of 95.
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| Transition to Desert |
Another half an hour finds us approaching our destination: Wickenburg.
Wickenburg has had two promising economic developments in its history. First,
gold was discovered in the nearby Vulture Mine in the 1860’s. That development was
dampened by hostile relations with the local Native Americans. After many
years of strife, the locals settlers convinced the Federal Government to relocate all
the Natives to a Navajo Reservation to the Northeast. The output of the mine was not very successful, either.
The second positive development came in 1913 with the
opening of the first “Western Guest Ranch”. This development yielded more
success than the Gold Mine; the town subsequently became the “Dude Ranch
Capitol of the World”. That explains the Welcoming Art coming south on Highway
93:
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| Welcome to Wickenburg |
More recently, one of the Dude Ranches has been converted into
the nation’s largest eating disorder treatment facility and is now the largest
employer in the town.
It is close to lunch time, but we decide to stop at our
hotel first. It’s a cute little place and we appreciate hospitality as we
check in.
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| Our Room at the My Place Suites |
Having checked in, we go downtown for some lunch and find Anita’s Cocina. We wish Eliot was with
us because he would surely appreciate the tasty, authentic food. After lunch,
we walk around town and stumble upon “The Jail Tree”.
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| The Jail Tree |
Back in the early days of the old west, it took a lot of
work to build a jail. In Wickenburg, they decided that those who needed to be
detained could just be chained up to an old mesquite tree. It wasn’t too cruel
as the detainees at least had a lot of shade.
This town takes its cowboy heritage seriously, as we can see
as we cross from the Jail Tree to visit the Desert Caballeros Western Museum,
containing both History and Art displays.
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| Desert Caballeros Western Museum |
The History section has a lot of really interesting stories,
but none are sadder than that of Arizona Hero Pat Tillman. A football player at
Arizona State University, he was drafted by and played 3 years for the Arizona
Cardinals until 9/11. He enlisted, was sent to Afghanistan, and was killed in action
under less than completely understood circumstances. This little museum had a
very moving tribute to him, with a video containing pictures and clips of tributes
to him from teammates, coaches and friends.
We next moved on to the Art Wing and were treated to some
fun Cowboy and Native American art displays. Even more fun was the basement of the Wing,
which houses artifacts from about 100 years ago showing how people actually
lived. This is the kind of stuff that Amy most appreciates. For example, to run
the house/kitchen of one of the storekeepers of the city, about 50 pounds of
firewood was consumed each day. It was usually a boy’s (son’s) job to bring
that wood into the house from where it was stored outside.
Back outside, we headed back to our car. The vegetation of
this town is quite different from what we are used to. Along the side of the
road, just east of the Museum, we find this along the side of the road:
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| Cactus in the City Strip |
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| Amy Shows Us How Tall the Cacti Are |
We continue on toward our car. At one point, preparing to cross a street, we notice a
gentleman, late 30s or early 40s, at the opposite corner of this, one of the
heavier trafficked intersections. He is waving an American Flag. He stands
between us and where we want to go, and he doesn’t appear to be doing anything
besides waving the flag, so we figure he is just being patriotic on this Sunday
before Memorial Day. We cross to his corner. As we pass him, I notice that
strapped to his right thigh is a holster with a fairly lethal looking modern side-arm
in it. Oh, yes, this is Arizona, I thought as we quietly passed by him.
We stopped at a local market to buy some groceries, went
back to our Inn, and “ate in”.
This was an interesting little town to visit, but we were definitely
grateful for the A/C!
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