Return To Lonesome Valley, Part 2

SP Crater, Coconino County, northern Arizona.

From The Cones north of Flagstaff, those beguiling volcanic eruptions of long ago, I made my way across to Valle, then south to Williams, Arizona. Through the little tourist town I had lived near and called home for a while. 

Across the southern edge of the Coconino Plateau. Meaning: the southern edge of the immense Colorado Plateau, too. Casual tourists who are not naturalists or geologists surely don't grasp the significance of driving off such an edge. It's not like you launch your car off into space. It's a highway, after all. Engineers designed the road to make it feasible to get down there from up here. 

Edge of the Colorado Plateau, south of Williams, Arizona.

 I only point this out so that the unaware appreciate it. Knowing about something makes it even more fun. That's my attitude.

So, down off the Colorado Plateau, into the beloved Central Arizona Highlands. That's their official name. My name for them is The In-Between Land. Because they're below the high country of Flagstaff, but still far above the hot desert of Phoenix. 

Prescott still lay a bit beneath where I was. The Perkinsville Road, so nice to be back alone in such familiar haunts. I had intended to continue on down, to take a motel room for the night. But when I saw Woodchute Mountain again in the evening light, I changed my mind. I had all I needed for the night: warm bedding, food, and...most of all...a superlative view. Turn off the ignition, I'm home for the night. Out in this high, wide, lonesome spectacle of nature that I know. 

Woodchute Mountain, from Perkinsville Road.

I'm home. Even though home is wherever I'm at. I'm a mountain man, I can't explain myself any better.

Tomorrow will find me back down in Prescott. All is well. 

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

© Copyright 2014 Stephen J. Krieg

Return To Lonesome Valley, Part 1

Humphreys Peak and the San Francisco Peaks, from the Cones.

I'd been away. Up north, exploring some same old country anew. Which, surprisingly, took me a bit further north up onto the Colorado Plateau. 

I loved where I'd been the past decade. Not that it was easy, not by a long shot. But it was getting easier. More importantly, I was learning some important life lessons. That truism about an old dog can't learn new tricks: that applies to dogs. Sometimes we humans turn out to be smarter. 

Sometimes. But back to the trip at hand.

When one returns to a place as hallowed as Lonesome Valley, one should approach it just right. To barge right in from an Interstate highway at top speed wouldn't be right. Just try it yourself if you don't believe me.

So I preferred my way. Of course, I had the time. I'd made sure to have it, but even if I hadn't I would have figured out a way to pare the route down. Something.

Having driven across southeast Utah, sort of exiting the Canyon Country, across the San Juan River at Mexican Hat. Across the northwest reaches of the Navajo Nation. South on U.S. 89, wishing I could turn right and go back up to Marble Canyon and Lees Ferry. But one thing at a time. 

Approaching Flagstaff, northern Arizona. The small but lofty mountain range called the San Francisco Peaks growing ever closer. 

Then, still way north of Flagstaff, it was time to turn off the highway. A cattle guard with a bright orange newspaper mail box posted there. Across the high plain toward The Cones. The volcanic cinder cones at the very northern fringe of the San Francisco Volcanic Field. 

I love driving across that place. So wild and high and clear sky all around. So I indulged again.

SP Crater volcano, from the Cones on the Babbitt Ranches, north of Flagstaff, Arizona.

 The sexy "black" star of the area is listed on the maps as "SP Crater". It's a huge, massive black cone of cinders that erupted a short time ago, uh, geologically, but long enough to us that we can relax and appreciate it without feeling like we have to be ready to scramble for a high speed escape at any moment.

As always, I savored driving around the crater, and the adjacent ones, all older (wiser?) and doing their best to keep melding into the landscape, vegetation wise. Let that soil sprout more grasses and forbs. Trees, too, eventually. Just look a few miles south to the forested hills and mountains around Flagstaff. 

The Cones, some of them, from the high and still wild Babbitt Ranches land.

Then it was time to continue a few more miles west. Out to 180. But, this time, not south to Flagstaff again. Not yet. Instead, up to Valle, and down 64 to Williams. Then, only then, back down off the Mogollon Rim there. Off the southern edge of the entire Colorado Plateau, in fact.

Back down to Lonesome Valley. And I would pause on the way back down. It seemed only fitting, once I was there.

Stay Tuned.

Prints and photo products are available on my Fine Art America sales website:
http://stephen-krieg.pixels.com/

© 2014 Stephen J. Krieg

Snow Shower Sunset Colors, Lonesome Valley

Sunset on the Lonesome Valley Buttes

I was coming down out of the foothills on the western side of Mingus Mountain as sunset time was near. Out onto Highway 89A north of Prescott Valley. 

I like this high, wide area of open grassland in part because it's right on the break between two watersheds. The small ravines flowing to the south are actually the very headwaters of the Agua Fria River, though nobody knows it unless they study the maps. Meanwhile, on the north side of the highway is Lonesome Valley itself, which drains into Granite Creek, and by that watercourse (usually dry on the surface) into the upper Verde River gorge. 

Thus if you were to pour out your water bottle you could choose which river's watershed to contribute to merely by stopping at this spot versus that spot along the road. Not that your water would get very far in the dry, deep soil, but still kind of cool to think about.

Sunset from Highway 89A, Lonesome Valley

My watershed musings were quickly interrupted by the sunset sky. The day had been one of flirtation with snow. In fact, showers were now hanging down in the distance to the north. The Lonesome Valley Buttes were visible on the horizon, up at Perkinsville Road east of the town of Chino Valley.

The low angle of the setting sun turned the buttes and the snow showers pink, purple, and rose. I wished that I could instantly transport myself about ten miles north to the Buttes, but instead I had to content myself with the view from afar. High, wide, and longingly lovely.    

Lonesome Valley, Arizona.

Lonesome Valley Road

Lonesome Valley. The first time I saw its name on the map, I was hooked. How evocative. 

Curiously, nobody I knew around there called it that. There was Prescott (Arizona's first capital, before it was even a state), Prescott Valley, and Chino Valley. Two valleys as city names, but neither of them Lonesome. 

This area, which likes to call itself the Central Arizona Highlands, isn't lonely these days, which is why they named the town east of Prescott to be Prescott Valley instead of Lonesome Valley. You see, back in the 1960s, some astute land developers recognized that it probably wouldn't be the shrewdest of business moves to try to sell plots of land in an out of the way place 90 miles north of Phoenix by calling it "Lonesome Valley". 

So they didn't. 

Thus they called their new little city Prescott Valley. Which sounds quaint, but will forever confuse non-locals as to whether the town they are driving through on the way to Prescott was actually Prescott, or Prescott-In-The-Prescott-Valley. After all, ringed by mountains, this must be a valley, right? And Prescott is the heart of it. Sufficiently confused, hopefully they will just pull over at a good restaurant and eat while asking the waitress. 

I guess that East Of Prescott wouldn't have been good, either. But it would have been accurate. 

Which somehow brings us back to Lonesome Valley. The real valley the town kind of borders. The valley north of it, the one too beautiful to take its name. Because cities, even small mountain town cities, are only beautiful in a way. Until they get crowded and polluted. 

That's when you need somewhere much more wide open and amazing. Like Lonesome Valley. Where the sky meets the land, instead of the other way around.

See more of my photography on my website: www.NaturalMoment.com.

© Copyright 2013 Stephen J. Krieg