Hi everyone! I hope that you all are doing great since the last time that I posted on here! Hopefully you are all waking up with the attitude to seize everyday and make the most of it each and everyday :-)

Anyways, this weekend I have a three day weekend since today is Presidents Day and yesterday my family and I decided to get out of the house to take a drive up north. We decided to go to Jerome, but instead of taking Interstate 17 up north, we wanted to take the scenic route out to Wickenburg and then Northeast through Yarnell and Skull Valley before heading through Congress and Prescott. The drive itself was absolutely gorgeous and its amazing how many people live up in those small towns. For instance, the town of Yarnell is only 8.8 square miles which is about 9 blocks in length and has a population of 645 as of the 2000 census. The other amazing part of the drive was the man made beauty of many of the canyons and buttes that we witnessed along the way. You will go through many areas where you are at the bottom of a valley and completely surrounded by mountains every direction that you look. It is absolutely gorgeous and definitely reminds you why you live in Arizona!

After about a two and a half hour drive and plenty of curvy mountain roads, we made it to the town of Jerome. Jerome is famously known as a ghost town and is located just outside of the city of Cottonwood. Jerome was first established in the late 19th century and is only 0.7 square miles, but is home to 444 people as of the 2010 census. At the top of the hill is a made up ghost town that is a local attraction and draws many tourists. If you want to go into the ghost town, then you will need to pay $6.00 per adult and $3.00 for children ages 5 to 12. Any child younger than 5 is free and anyone in a wheelchair is also free. The ghost town was cool in the aspect that it captured the lifestyle of the late 19th and 20th centuries, but I believe it failed to do a good job of representing the true historic ghost town feel that I was expecting. Instead, I felt like it was something that someone put together as an attraction to make money instead of something to educate tourists and make them feel as though they were in a real ghost town. Throughout the ghost town there are different buildings that represent a dentist office, a jail, a saloon, and a tool shop. There is also a building that had historic cars from the 20th century and some old tools from back during that era as well. I think that you would be alright if you skipped this attraction and focused more on the downtown area of Jerome instead.

As you made your way down the hill from the ghost town, you approached the downtown portion of Jerome. Throughout the downtown area is where you will feel emerged in the real ghost town scene and you might get to possibly experience a few ghost hauntings since it is really haunted after all. There are plenty of shops, restaurants, and eateries throughout the downtown area to keep you busy for an afternoon and plenty of stories to be shared among the towns residents to keep tourists fascinated and coming back for more. We didn't personally stop at any of the restaurants or stores since we were short on time, but did drive through and I would say that you should definitely drive through if you decide to not walk through the town. The most historic building in Downtown Jerome would have to be the Connor Hotel (pictured on this blog post) which was built in 1898 by David Connor and is haunted. David Connor was one of the towns two businessmen and charged $1.00 per night for guests to spend the night in his hotel. I definitely recommend driving by and walking into the hotel to see if you might experience some of the proposed "hauntings" that others talk about.

After you drive through the town of Jerome, you continue to go down curvy mountain roads for another 5 miles or so until you reach the town of Cottonwood. The town is not as rich in historic buildings and history as Jerome, but is still a neat tourist town with plenty of beautiful scenery for the eye to capture. Throughout the town are modernized stores such as Office Max, Food City, Safeway, and Frys Marketplace. There are also restaurants mixed in such as Panda Express and KFC Chicken. We decided to stop and get lunch at a Mexican restaurant called El Toreo. The food here is absolutely WONDERFUL and I highly recommend it if you like good, authentic Mexican food! It is probably one of the best Mexican restaurants that I have eaten at during my time in Arizona. I got the Taco Salad Bowl and the guacamole hit the spot, the shell of the taco bowl was homemade and absolutely delicious, and the tortilla chips are to die for. You definitely should plan on stopping here if you go up to Jerome and Cottonwood!

After lunch, we headed back east and got back on Interstate 17 before heading east through the outer reaches of Prescott, Black Canyon City, Bumblebee, New River, Carefree, and Anthem. The drive home was right at sunset so unfortunately the sun was right in my face, but it was absolutely gorgeous still :-) Another town I would like to travel to someday is Bumblebee which is probably about an hour from Cottonwood and Jerome. Its a quaint mountain town and is surrounded by beautiful pine trees, plenty of grassy green buttes, and red rock mountains. It looks gorgeous and looks like another town rich in history!

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post and look for more to come in the coming weeks :-) Hopefully I can take a weekend trip up to Pine or Strawberry in eastern Arizona or down south to Tucson. Take care until I write to you all next time!