Monday, January 19, 2009

Historic Wickenburg

We spent most of the day in the frontier town of Wickenburg, AZ, 54 miles northwest of Surprise. Lloyd and I had stayed overnight here on one of our drives down but arrived too late and left too early the next day to really see the sights. I determined then and there that we needed to go back and do the tourist thing. It's a very interesting town - close enough for a lovely day trip. We didn't stay long enough to tour the ghost town and gold mine - we'll save that for another day.


This is Randy and Wendy outside the western museum. The name of this sculpture is "Thank you for the rain".


We have a northerner's fascination with cacti. There are so many different varieties and they're such interesting plants to learn about. The giant saguaro which are so prevalent here don't get their first 'arms' until they're between 50 - 100 years old! It takes them a long time to reach this impressive height. That's Wendy and Randy standing in front of one of them.


These beautiful specimens were just begging to be photographed.


Looks real doesn't he? Sculptures like this one of the burrow and prospector are common in the downtown part of Wickenburg. Beside each one there's a button to push to hear the story of the sculpture - very entertaining.


That beavertail cactus (or maybe it's prickly pear) is growing out of the trunk of the palm tree - very unusual.


Oops! the rain prayer statue again, this time with three beauties sitting in front. In case you don't recognize us, it's Mickey, me and Wendy.


Another thing that scares the bejeebers out of unwary tourists are things like gila monsters, rattle snakes, road runners and giant spiders on the sidewalks - all made of metal and secured in place of course. You should have seen Wendy jump when I pointed out the black widow spider a couple of inches away from her feet!!!


In the early days of Wickenburg they didn't have a jail. Instead, when someone needed incarceration, he was handcuffed and chained to the jail tree, where he sat until he was satisfactorily dealt with.

So that's just a taste of our day. I'm going to go post the rest of my pictures on Facebook.

Oh yes, and for those of you who asked, this is how the back of my hair looks now.