The day after Thanksgiving Nora and I went for a drive. I wanted to see cottonwoods in their fall colors and so we drove up towards Prescott and the Peeples Valley. But rather than go all the way to Prescott and eat lunch by the square like we usually do - we took a left towards Kirkland, Hillside, and Skull Valley. We did a circle around the mountain range and went back toward the main road and Wickenburg following Date Creek. This is basically the way train goes from Wickenburg to Prescott.
I've always wanted to do this drive. It's rural Arizona like what most of the state used to be and is no longer. As I put it to Nora - the Peeples Valley is like the town 'Radiator Springs' in the Cars movie. Back in the late 1970's I can remember driving to Jerome and there was no urban sprawl North of Prescott. And Sedona is now a HUGE sprawling mess too.
So I wanted to checkout the small towns Kirkland and Hillside. Go back in time and check out what Arizona used to be like. And the drive delivered! We saw ranches and farms, stock tanks with windmills, yellow cottonwoods, and drove through small towns with only a gas station for commerce. There was no place to buy lunch on the entire drive once we left the Peeples Valley. The dirt road along Date Creek between Hillside to the highway by Congress was a little rough, but we just went slow and enjoyed the views.
Funnily enough I noticed that some of the most impressive cottonwoods that we saw were growing right in the Hassyampa river bed in downtown Wickenburg. I also now appreciate how unchanged Wickenburg has remained since I've been going there. Prescott and Sedona are unrecognizable, but Wickenburg is still the cowboy town it has always been.
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