Jerome, Arizona, en route to Southern Utah.
Phew, that’s better. Urgent care did the trick, and washed out my ear, and I can hear again! That actually took up most of the morning, though.
I actually didn’t do too much today. I did take a drive to nearby Jerome, which for a while at least was a mining ghost town after the gold, silver, and copper mines packed up by the early 1950s, or even earlier, and the population dwindled to less than a hundred people. Back when mining was a happening thing, Jerome had about 15,000 people, and Sedona was a primary source for food, groceries, and provisions. The two towns sort of grew hand-in-hand, but Sedona survived the downtown, and Jerome didn’t. It became a National Historic Landmark in the late 1960s, and had a bit of a revival, but not too much.
The town is tucked into the Black Hills, sitting at about 5,300 feet, and is sort of quaint, in a worn out way, with twisty streets scattered with stores and eateries, but not a lot. It’s a still a small town with not a great deal going for it, although there are some very nice buildings there, such as the Jerome Grand Hotel, which was formerly one of the town’s hospitals. The streets, many not well paved and in poor repair, wind up into the hills, houses scattered along them.
There is a museum and a mining ghost town museum, which I drove up to, but it’s surrounded by the rusting hulks of old cars, trucks, and buses. Not an attractive look.
Jerome overlooks the Verde Valley, which a sprawling plain below.
And that was about it. I tried figuring out how to convert this blog to a real blog, that’s user friendly, but still need help, and I’m frankly afraid to make any serious adjustments for fear of screwing it up, or losing the whole thing. After a while, I drove back to Sedona to take a hike, but the hike I planned to take, a lovely hike on airport mesa loop that Bev and I walked, with great views, had zero parking and there was no other place to park nearby, and by then it was getting on for dusk, so I headed back here to Cottonwood, will watch some TV, and maybe go to sleep earlier than usual.