I haven’t written for a while, it was a busy summer. We had no time to travel, so there was a pause in my posting. But we still did one trip in the end of hot July when the monsoon clouds in teams were crowding the skies:
And then they would concentrate into one bundle and rain:
So we headed south to Arizona and down past Flagstaff to Prescott. But on the way there was Montesuma’s Castle. It is just a name for an ancient Indian dwelling built in the crevices of the rocks. It is definitely worth visiting, except the timing was not good – way too hot. The sweat was running and the short trip from parking to the castle seemed like a hard walk. But the view impressed. It is unbelievable how those people were not afraid to live so high up, to raise their kids without losing them to the bottom and constantly climb up and down for the water supplies from the river:
Next day after staying for my Bowen class in Prescott we drove back towards Flagstaff through Jerome. It is located on a rather steep slope of a mountain, but luckily not as steep as Montasuma’s Castle. Maybe that is the reason people still live in Jerome, though some of its buildings are abandoned and it gives some charm to the town. The main street is winding down the slope and here we see a house for sale – it is listed as a previously operated Brothel with two big windows for the girls to show their beauty. I don’t remember the price of it, but it was reasonable:
And the street winds down:
Looking down from Jerome into the Valley we could see the Jerome Museum set in some rich person’s mansion who established his riches while running the copper mining business in the mountain. It is a pity we were too late to visit it.
A church turned into a hotel?
The remnants of a hay-day bank in the center of the town:
The same bank from the side street:
And one more image of it – I guess I liked it:
In one of very short side streets we noticed that we could not only look around but also – take a movie ourselves: 
And that was it, the darkness came as it always does very quickly in these southern countries…
We did this trail on May 6th, 2008. The beginning of May was very slow with guests at our B&B, so we used one of the days off. It took the whole day. To drive to Big Water from us, Zion NP, is more than 3 h. Then we parked the car at the end of a dirt road which lead deeper from Big Water and ended by a very wide and almost dry river. The hard duty cars, I guess, could drive further. But we proceeded to a 9 mile walk. At first it was confusing – the mountain lines were wide apart and two almost dry rivers were meeting somewhere here. We took the road which lead to one of the streams and towards the mountains first, but after meeting very disappointed Austrians, who were confused about the map BLM gave them and after having wondered for a couple of hours in vain -we decided to cross the desert towards the previously seen wide river bed and follow it.
Though it looked attractive and led mysteriously to some hills and rocks, it was the wrong road, one has to turn left from it, cut the desert and follow the wide river bed at wetter places covered with white salts.
We had our lunch sitting in one of those rock holes, listening to the silence and looking into the vastness of nature:
Here are the very few delicate flowers sticking from the desert floor:
even the lupins:
Those are the views we saw walking further and further – it seemed endless…
But the hoodoos we were striving to see were much further…over there in the distance to the left:
At last, here they were. We saw some immediately by the river bank and some behind a corner to the left. A big group of mushroom like rock formations that happen to be sculpted by nature forces in certain rocks:
Due to occasional rains the area gets some of them are gone forever…only their dark brown heads are still sticking from a melted stem:
Some are still standing erect:
but already quite a difference in comparison with pictures we saw in galleries which enticed us to come and check for ourselves. I mean they look very different, very much melted:
That was it. We headed back all the same way in this wide space of the river which apparently has had water once upon a time… The trip took us totally 5 hours.
