Saturday, August 23, 2014
This was actually our second time ever being in Prescott. The first time was only a quick drive-through, but even then we knew one thing for sure: this is where we want to retire someday! Well, if we ever just settle down and retire… our first choice is to just live on the road and travel all the time. We'll see. :)
Today actually began when we were awoken at some point in the night when we heard some strange sounds coming from outside the tent. I'll admit I was freaked out, and I wouldn't let Curtis get up to check it out. Now I regret this though, because we'll never know what it was. The one thing we agree that we heard was licking. Was something licking the picnic table? We hadn't eaten anything on there. But then the next morning, Curtis found an empty soy sauce packet underneath the table…hmmm. We'll never know.
We woke up with the sun this morning, packed up our things, and drove into Prescott by 7. Unlike the night before, there were plenty of parking spaces downtown, so we stopped and took a walk around the Yavapai county courthouse.
Statue on the South side of the courthouse. It looks like the horse is standing on the man's back.
The beautiful courthouse from the Southeast corner.
There was construction going on around all sides but this one. We were conflicted about the trees, because on one hand they cast a shadow against the building, but on the other hand we like the trees because living in Tucson, we don't see big trees like these and we miss them!
The North side of the courthouse. We've taken a new interest in checking out courthouses. This was the 3rd one we've seen in the past month. :)
Our favorite part - they had written out the history of Prescott - starting with the US, then Arizona, then Prescott's history. Prescott was the original territorial seat for Arizona, founded in 1864.
After this, we drove out to the Salida Gulch trailhead, where we would be hiking today. Here there is a lovely loop trail with a letterbox series honoring the 19 Hotshot firefighters from Prescott that lost their lives in the Yarnell Hill fire in 2013.
Beautiful trees and rolling hills as far as we could see. The trail took us up and around several hills, then back down through a wash. It looped around so much that we were a bit disoriented with where we were and where we were headed, but we know that the trail was about 4.5 miles long.
Enjoying the beautiful morning together! While we were over here, some other hikers passed by and asked if we were bird watching. :)
This just gives you an example of how I take pictures with auto timer - here we have our letterbox logbooks on a rock, with another rock on top to set it higher, then a smaller rock to hold the lens up and keep it from falling. I was trying really hard to get it over the weeds. I guess I could always get a tripod or ask others to take a picture for us, but I really enjoy using my creative methods. ;)
This is probably the highest point we made it to today. This picture is facing West toward Prescott.
We really enjoyed the trail, the only unfortunate part was that the letterbox clues had us counting steps most of the way through which made it harder to enjoy. (by counting steps, I mean they varied between 200-1490 "steps", and that just took away from being able to enjoy the trail.)
Another fun stop was by this little waterfall near the end.
We found petroglyphs!
After this, we grabbed a few more boxes and then went back into town for some lunch. We headed on home after that, this time taking the interstate route. We stopped only once to enjoy the by 1-get 1 mixers at Culvers in Casa Grande. We really enjoyed the trip and hope to go back someday!
Day 2 summary: found 25 letterboxes, hiked almost 5 miles.
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