A Little Adventure

 

A Little Adventure

by rdpecken on Oct.02, 2011, under Area

On all of our trips to the Ranch, we pass by a turnoff that says, “Perkinsville – XX Miles” (I don’t remember how many miles, maybe 17 or so…)

So on this trip, on the way back, we came up on that sign again, and I thought, “Maybe this is a shortcut to I-17… Seems like about the right distance.”

So As I was making the turn to Perkinsville, I asked John, “Are you up for a little adventure?”. Turns out, it was a little more than I expected. The road started out as a nice paved two-lane road going to the Drake Cement Plant. Within just a couple of miles, we got the dreaded sign that says something like… “Travel at your own risk, unmaintained road”. But the road was still in pretty good shape, so we decided to continue on. Here is the path we ended up taking. Starting at Drake, and ending up in Jerome, AZ.

Drake-Perkinsville-Jerome Road

Once the pavement ended, we had a pretty good view from point #1 on the map, toward the Sedona area.

View near Drake, to the East

About an hour into the trip, we came across a pretty cool place where a creek had eroded out some rocks (about point # 2, on the map).

 
Erosion

Finally, about 1-1/2 hrs in, we found the Verde River crossing.

Verde River Valley

Upon reaching the river, we found the Perkinsville Bridge (Location # 3). It looks more like something in Nebraska, than in Arizona, but water will do that to this place.

Randy, at Perkinsville Bridge 
 
John at Perkinsville Bridge

The Verde river is pretty small at this point, and seems to back up under the bridge.

Verde River, upstream from Perkinsville Bridge

The Downsteam side flows a little cleaner…

Verde River downstream from Perkinsville Bridge

There is a nice little corral next to the river…

Corral at Perkinsville

As we climbed up the side of Mingus Mountain, we had a nice view to the north (Location # 4)…

North from Mingus

and finally, we dropped back into the Verde Valley off the mountain (Location # 5)

Coming down the mountain into town

All told, it was about a 3 hour shortcut.

1 comment for this entry (from previous blog site):
WB0WHO
October 4th, 2011 on 3:56 pm

I really enjoyed this Adventure! We really have some nice pictures! It is to bad no one had a camera on the Locked Gate Route 66 short cut!

John

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Battery Upgrade for the LittleHouse

Image
 Over the past year or so, our batteries for the solar power system have been deteriorating.  This winter, I replaced just one of the eight 6 volt lead-acid batteries, in the hopes that it would improve operation until I could apply a fix in the spring. It worked for a while, but then other batteries in the string began losing their capacity to the point of the system going down nearly every day for a few hours before the sun rises each morning. I decided to bite the bullet and install a whole new string of batteries. On researching, it appeared that it would make sense to replace the old lead-acid battery technology with newer Lithium Iron Phosphate technology.  Not only are the new batteries considerably more compact and lightweight for a given capacity, they should also last much longer and require little maintenance. I decided the replace the eight batteries comprising the 48 volt, 200 amp hour lead acid string with two Lithium Iron battery packs of 100 amp hours each.  This matche
Read more

November 2022 Visit

Image
    With a cold front approaching, I decided to run up to the Ranch to winterize the water pipes before the sustained 20-degree days hit us later in the week. I rinsed out our 200 gallon water tank that we use to haul water from the standpipe in Seligman to our Ranch.  After loading up the tank in the truck, I headed for Seligman. There had been reports that the standpipe in town had been modernized to accept debit cards for thew water that is drawn.  But upon arrival to the standpipe, I found that people were inserting quarters, and found a note on the control that said the new system was "still not working". Luckily, I had a fist full of quarters in the truck that I save for carwashes, and things of that nature. When it was my turn, I used the quarters, and filled up the 200 gallon tank.  It cost about 20 cents per gallon, so $2.50 to fill the tank. I hauled the water up the hill and parked on a small slope near the LittleHouse to help get all of the water out of the tank. 
Read more