Anne & Tom's Southwest Adventure travel blog

On the cliff at Jerome.

Looking into the valley at Jerome

The entrance to the ghost town - an old gold mining village...

The town must have had a lot of automobile servive dealers.

Here's an old Dodge Brothers car

This rooster was crowing his head off!

The entrance to the old gold mine

Of course the town had entertainment

The old sawmill powered by a single piston gas engine was in...

Sawing a slab

It stalled and the drive belt flew off, but the workman got...

This is just for Dr Messer (our dentist)

I hope this was painless - the prices certainly were back then!

A working windmill

There were many old firetrucks. Matt - want to get one?

A bit of a different type of entertainment.

Our RV parked in the ghost town lot.

The beginning of the Perkinsville dirt road. We should have turned back!...

Along the wider part of the road.

Passing an oncoming car with a cliff on our right!

The cows have the right of way!

This one would not budge.

A flatter area.

One lane bridge.

We made it after 2 hours.

The Santa Fe dam.

Our campsite at the KOA in Flagstaff.


Sunday dawned sunny and warm. We first visited the ghost town of Gold King MInes outside of Jerome, which was fascinating - lots of antique cars and trucks and tons of junk, plus a working sawmill. Next we decided to take the scenic route to Flagstaff - it was listed as a three-season drive on dirt and gravel for the first half out of Jerome, AZ. What they did not say was that it is one-lane (but two-way) with steep cliffs (going up on one side and DOWN on the other) with no guardrails. Once we were on it, there really was no place to turn around, so we were committed. It took us two hair-raising hours to get to the paved part. Too much excitement! Stayed in Flagstaff at a KOA where Tom was bashing the garbage cans as he backed into the site, but did not know it - he thought Anne was was ignoring the big tree next to them. It was a tight fit.

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