Christmas in Arizona

Spent a week back in Arizona visiting my family for Christmas. During that time we visited Christmas light a the Mesa Arizona Temple, the rebuilt ghost town of Goldfield aka 'the Tourist Trap' and visited 'Montezuma's Castle' on my way back home to Utah.

Mesa Arizona Temple Christmas lights and scenes.

 

The rebuilt ghost town of Goldfield, Arizona aka the 'Tourist Trap'. I wasn't overall impressed with the town it just felt like there should have been something more. I guess I'm use to exploring old ghost town and mines in the middle of nowhere. The history of Goldfield can be found on their website at : http://www.goldfieldghosttown.com/history.html

 

The ruins of 'Montezuma Castle' in central Arizona. The history of 'Montezuma's Castle' can be found on the National Park site at: http://www.nps.gov/moca/historyculture/index.htm

See the photo above and the little photo on the left hand-side on the plaque which shows the area I'm looking at in the photo.

 

 

I also joined some friends to hike Camelback Mountain but no photo's where taken during the trip. Though we did see Santa Clause at the top of the mountain.

The Month of No Trips

No trip reports for the month of November due to being back in Utah for 3 weekends looking for housing and back in main office working.

Pryor Mountain Area - Burnt Timber Ridge Road

Some additional photo's from last weekends mountain bike trip up 'Burnt Timber Ridge Road' - these are just past the point that I turned around last time.

 

 

 

The trail past this point was pretty much snow covered with just a few bare areas in between, so this was a good place to turn around. At this point anyways I could hardly ride my bike due to the amount of elevation I gained from the trial head.

Heading back down.

The trail drops down the ridge in the center of the photo - gives you an idea of the distance covered.

Despite being exhausted from the ride up and a puncture tire (2 holes within an inch of each other) this was a good trip and one of the few times I was able to get out to bike a trail this year.

If you were to drive this road 4-wheel drive is required.

Some of the photo's have blur marks on it since my old point shoot has some scratches on the lense.

Pryor Mountain Area, Montana

This was kind of an unplanned adventure. My original plan for Saturday was to venture up though the Bighorn National Recreation Area to the ghost towns/sites of Lockhart, Ewing and Hillsboro but because of the government shut down the road leading in was closed. I had a feeling that it might be before the trip but I decided to take a chance anyways. The country road that skirts around the border of the park was washed out about ¾ of the way and is only suitable for foot traffic now.

So with not really knowing what to do I went ahead and headed off in the Pyror Mountain Area to do a bit of exploring.  

View from Hwy 14A before dropping down into Lovell Wyoming.

 

Washout on County Road 16. 

 

The view from Sykes Ridge Road.

 

View of Bighorn Lake.

Wild horses spotted along the way (click on the photo to enlarge it to see the horses).

Sykes Ridge.

More wild horses (click on the photo to enlarge it to see the horses).

View from 'Burnt Timber Ridge'.

Wilderness Study Area. You can see where the old road was before the area was closed off.

View of 'Big Pryor' Mountain.

Silly BLM.

 

View along the road before heading on back.

Old tractor at the turnoff to 'Burnt Timber'.

 

When I got home I looked up the area I was travelling in because I didn’t have a map of the area and lol and behold the two roads I took loop together. I’ll have to try and head back to make the loop before leaving Wyoming in a couple months.