First it's Highway 69; now the complaints are focused on the proposed roundabouts. We never had it so good. If you want a highway to complain about, take a look at the unpaved Prescott-Jerome road over Mingus and along Yeager Canyon into the old copper capital. I'd guess that the highway was state of the art at the time and that ADOT was pretty dang proud of their work cutting a road into the side of that canyon.Probably similar to the Yarnell Hill road the time my grandparents, Mom and Pop and BabyGrannyJ were coming down from a trip to the high country. It was night. The lights on the car went out and Pop went on foot to guide the car down the mountainside, while Mom held me tight and fretted! If I remember the tale correctly, Grandpa had to back the car down all the way!
I found the highway picture at an album of old penny postcards; the Yavapai pictures were primarily of Jerome which at the time was the most important and largest town in the county.
When I was young, my brothers and I, took a trip with our uncle to his cabin in the California Sierras. The only road was a dirt logging road. Each time we came to a bend in the road, my uncle would honk his horn. When he got a louder return honk, we stopped. We must have backed up a half dozen times to where the road was wide enough to let the trucks hauling logs get by.
ReplyDeleteE will drive on any cliff-the worst for me is maneuvering forward and back to get around a curve too tight for the length of the vehicle as the edge of the eroded "road" crumbles from under the tires and bounces into the canyon below. You almost got to experience my scariest curve first hand if you recall...
ReplyDeleteSteve-- sounds like the forest road from the top of Mingus to Jerome on the very steep mountainside. Narrow, a major drop-off, blind curves. The one road my late husband found scary to drive.
ReplyDeleteBrain -- I do indeed recall that outing. We never did reach the cliff, however.
super photo -- my kind of road!
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived on the other side of the mountain, I used to like to go to the Spirit Room in Jerome, have about 4 beers, then see how fast I could drive down the mountain road home. 'Course it was paved but still . . .
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