This morning, since it wasn't actively raining/snowing we went out to Red Rocks State Park.
The visitor's center is down below. I like that they tried to make it blend in with the landscape.
The park covers 286 acres and is an active nature preserve.
I was trying to get a picture of this Rufous hummingbird, but didn't do a very good job.
Here we go a-wandering among the fields so pale.
Fungus makes this shrub really yellow.
Selfie # 33: Red Rocks Park.
No horses on the bridge.
Oak Creek.
Oak Creek escaped into the flood plain on the right not too long ago.
I liked this tree. It's a good tree.
We climbed up a little hill to get a better view.
That's the no horses bridge down below.
Some of the rock formations have names, but I don't know what these are called.
Selfie #34: More of Red Rocks Park.
This is the House of Apache Fires. It was built in 1947 by Jack and Helen Frye. The couple divorced before the house was finished. Back then the couple owned the property.
You can read more about it here.
This didn't become a park until 1991.
I liked this tree too. It might be the same one as before, but from a distance.
There's nothing exciting in this photo, so don't waste your time looking.
I liked the colors of the leaves.
The walkway around the visitor's center.
We left the park and decided to go explore one of the off road tracks.
But first we had to get to an off road track.
The fog/low clouds feel like the top of the scenery wasn't filled in.
The sun shines 300 days out of the year in Sedona. Just not for us.
We finally found a dirt road. And a bubble house.
It's a little less "big rocks" in this direction.
It was a little muddy at times, but really nothing that needed 4 wheel drive. The truck got a nice coating of red dirt though.
Afterwards we drove out to Jerome, a "ghost town."
This is a big piece of Azurite and Malachite. It weighs 2,700 lbs.
Jerome used to be a big mining town. In the 1920's around 15,000 people lived here; now, around 400 do. In the 1950s, at its lowest population, only 50 people lived here.
Rocks that glow in the dark/fluoresce!
Inside the Douglas Mansion is a museum about the town and mining.
All the things they mined and in what quantities.
Overall, the museum was...okay. Which could be said of Jerome in general. The town is a little like the Swamp Castle in Monty Python. It kept burning down and being rebuilt and falling off the hillside and being rebuilt and then being burned down again.
We wandered around town for a bit and found this kind of sad little church.
Why do they have six Christmas trees? And why are they still up?
We had lunch at Haunted Hamburger, which wasn't bad.
This was the poster in our hotel room. When I was younger, Mom used to have a t-shirt that looked exactly like this. Now you know.
Oh! You're probably wondering (or completely forgot) what happened with the titanium rainbow shield of protection class. We decided to go, and see what the deal was, only I couldn't find ANY information about a place or time or anything. It wasn't even listed anymore where I original saw the event. I found it again buried somewhere on a website. We found the location to be an abandoned looking "church" that was in a strip mall. We decided not to knock on the door. I think the "church" went under and only recently got the events removed. Oh well, we tried.
Since the class was a bust, we went to see a movie at the local independent movie theater.
It was a Belgian film called "The Brand New Testament." It was great. You should check it out.
Today's Miles: 77.1 - Total Miles: 4609.5
This concludes our adventures for today.
