Julie Ferguson and I took a few days to trek around the desert on a spontaneous road trip event.
We began with a healthy dose of Spirit Halloween store shopping. It seems this year they still have the zombies, clowns and pirates we expect, but have added some great creepy dolls, Day of the Dead themes and superhero costumes. The line of AtmosFear FX holographic videos has expanded with a great price $39.99. They had a lot of cool and somewhat realistic animal masks (us above).
We then headed out at sunset to a desert cemetery called Maricopa Cemetery in the Southwest part of the Greater Phoenix area. It was a striking sunset.
We couldn't help by drive down a lone cornfield and stop outside an abandoned ranch with crumbling roof-less buildings to capture the sunset in the distance through the buildings. When we zoomed in, however, we saw something really creepy that didn't belong in an abandoned site.
The next day, we were looking at a map and saw a place called "Nothing, Arizona." Well, that begged us to go see.
The town was named by some guys who partied there in the 1970s. It wasn't really a town. But, eventually a little shop and restaurant were built and didn't last all that long. When we looked at the map, the next town was Wickieup. We had to see that!
This town was a nice-sized town. There were a few gift shops, restaurants and the like, as it is the major stop between Phoenix and Kingman and those traveling on to Las Vegas.
The gift shop and restaurant were fantastic with both campy Arizona gifts and beautiful crafts and art. The food was great!
We headed back to Wickenburg and went by the Vulture Mines. Even though it is privately owned now, it is re-opening for tours at the end of October. While photographing it, a dust devil cut across the view.
The next day, we headed out to Lake Pleasant and up to Wickenburg again, by a different route, Rt 74, known as the "Carefree Highway" (inspired Gordon Lightfoot's song).
The water was warm.
We headed back on the road for some urban exploration. Lots of abandoned sites along Wittman and El Mirage.
On the way home, we managed to get a striking sunset -
