VERDE CANYON RAILROAD TRIP - AZ

We took a bus trip to Cottonwood AZ to take a train ride into Verde Canyon to Perkinsville and back. It was a four hour trip and we had wonderful sunny weather for it! With a little time to spare before we could board the train, Gary took some pictures around the train depot. The caboose had been booked for a small dinner party. Since they had not boarded either, Gary was permitted to take pictures inside. Very nice and what a way to have a dinner and visit, all in the comforts of home and also mountain scenery. This is the open air car that we will be able to travel in once our tour guide makes sure that we are all on board! We had a full bus load, so there are more to board yet! Once we were out in the open car, we never did go back inside during the trip. It was a beautiful day!

Cottonwood was not far from Jerome, the town on the side of the mountain that had been a copper mining town in it's hay day.

So the beginning of of our ride, was passing the mounds of slag from the smelters. In recent years, they have decided that there are some valuable materials in these mounds. So they will soon begin to reprocess this slag. There is 45 acres. fifty feet deep. They say that there will be a third ounce of gold to every ton. Out of millions of ton, I'd say it would be a bundle!! And that is only one of the materials that they will take out of this.

We begin by goin' round the bend!!

Here you can see an ancient Indian cave dwelling in the middle of the picture. You can tell that it was a dwelling because of the blackened ceiling from their fires. They also have partially closed in the opening with their mud bricks.

Crossing a trestle over the Verde River

Now sit back and enjoy the mountain and cliffs. Our narrator in the open car, Don, was always pointing out formations of rocks that looked like something to him or others. Sometimes we could see the resemblance and sometimes we could not. What do you see when you look at the formations?

As we crossed over the valley, headed for the mountains of rock, we could see the mountains on the other side of the valley covered with brush and small trees and Juniper. No tall pine trees in this area!!

Sometimes there was evidence of human habitation, but it was few and far between. There were a couple fairly nice homes.

Goin' round the bend again!

Here we begin into the tunnel going through the mountain.

You can see another Indian dwellings here that has been used in recent years also.

We are now coming into Perkinsville where we will begin our journey back to Cottonwood.

You can see what is left of the old cattle corral used by the Perkins when they lived here. This town is still owned by the Perkins children.

They are now moving the engine to the other end of the train to pull it back the way we came. See some one leaning out over the side of out open air car?

We leave the ghost town of Perkinsville behind! Really it can not be a total ghost town as there were a couple of newer model trucks parked in the not near this station. Not sure what they would be out here for!!

You can see Gary here bending Don's ear about our life style. Seems that he and his wife used to travel like we do. He said that his wife got tired of it and they have since settled down.

Well, we have not tired of the life style. So we will be packing up this week and leaving April 2nd for places north. California will be our first stop where we will look up my uncle, who I have not seen in years. He is the only sibling left on my mother's side of the family. I am anxious to see how he is doing.

Stay with us!!

P.S. I appologize for the layout of this Blog. It sure was not intentional. I am not sure why, but the pictures loaded on the right side when the setting was for the left side. I could not get them moved over, no matter what I did and I could not drag them. So I had to just work with it and hope that it does not look too bad when I publish it.