Road Trip

A couple of days ago, I decided that we should try to find what is on the other side of the mountain towards Clarkdale.  Looking at a map, it seemed that Williams would be a destination that way.  Williams is well known for the place where you can get on the train to the Grand Canyon – Grand Canyon Railroad.  Knowing that we would not have time for that, I tried to find another “attraction” that would make this a Destination Road Trip!!!  Eventually I found Bearizona Wildlife Park — what better place to check out!

And of course with irrational fear of bears why would I not want to see them right next to our truck!!  This is one of those drive thru type of parks so it seemed like a great destination!

Next I googled the route that we could take and came up with the following:

How boring either of those routes looked…yes we would go through the hills of Jerome, which is so beautiful, but I really wanted to go OVER the mountain and not take the freeways around.  So I zoomed in closer on the map and found the Jerome-Perkinsville Road!!  Yea a ROAD — it had to be good!!  And just look how curvy — I knew it would go through the mountains with switch backs like that!!

Well after leaving Jerome the first thing we pass is the Gold King Mine and Ghost Town!!  That should have probably been our first clue that we should have listened to the truck GPS that said “make a u-turn when possible”!

We kind of laughed and said it was just another tourist trap not to be taken seriously!!  Then we came to this sign, along with a warning that if it were winter you MUST have 4WD.

Again, we thought how bad can it be, the truck has 4WD if needed and even though GPS kept insisting on “make a u-turn when possible”!  But we drove on and could see why any other vehicle we did see on the road looked like these!!

There was another vehicle in front of us….a jeep, but not really a jeep-jeep!  🙂

At one point we both stopped and we pulled up along side of them.  The four of us laughed saying are we going to get out of here!!  The woman said some friends advised them to take this drive — she said I am now guessing if they are really “friends”!!  We both had Williams as our destination and decided to continue with them leading the way!

David and I later decided that probably the only way we would take this road again is if we rented ATV’s…..but Jason would NOT drive!  The edge of the road in some places were really drop offs that you would not want to have to stop suddenly to make a turn.  And in some places passing another vehicle was nearly impossible.  There were one lane bridges but you were warned about that….other curves did not give any warning to watch for oncoming vehicles.  We did meet one on a curve and they could have opened our truck door they were so close!!

Along the way, the road was dirt, curvy and rocky!  Typical speed was about 20!!

If I could move my sweaty hands to take a picture there were some beautiful sites!!!  In spots we could even see the road ahead of us hugging the side of the mountains!

After driving on this interesting road for over an hour, the road turned to tar and was a better drive.  We were at 7000 feet and it actually looked like a little like Minnesota Fall up there!  Not really….just a tree or two, but it was great to see a little color!

We finally got in to Williams about 2 and tried to decide if we really still wanted to go to Bearizona!!  After all it was $23 a piece to get in and would it really be worth it.  So we decided to go ahead and pay to drive thru.  Not sure I would say it was worth that amount…it was interesting and maybe if you had more time there it would be worth it to walk some of the paths they have and watch the bird show, but we were just kind of late for that.  It was fun to see some of the animals up close as they came near the truck!

Again, probably worth it more if you spend a few hours there.  You can go on the drive as many times as you want, which is a plus if the animals are not out and about.  For us they all seemed to be up and moving and actually looked like most of them were just being fed, which probably gave them incentive to wake up from their afternoon naps.

Since we had only had breakfast at home in the morning, we decided to find a place to eat in Williams.  We stopped at a place that had good reviews on Yelp — Kicks on 66!!  There are lots of “Kicks” along the 66 route, but this one is in Williams.  The food was fantastic and the service was great.  We got there at the typical “senior dinner time” (4-5 pm) so it was pretty quiet.  Definitely a place to go back to especially if we venture there sometime to take the Grand Canyon Railroad!

Otherwise Arizona is going good — weather was a little chilly this morning getting down to about 37, but as the sun comes out, that temp quickly climbs and it is now 59 at 11:30am.

Jason and Jen (Salty Maggie) will be here over Thanksgiving so starting to think of what adventures they would like to enjoy!!  Maybe we should try the road to Williams again??!!??  Probably not!!  LOL

TIFN

Cute picture of the day — this is called “Spaghetti Happiness”!!