The four roads out of Williams, Arizona, point to the four compass directions. To the east and west is Interstate 40—the modern-day version of Route 66 and even older trails that the First Nation People used. To the north is Arizona Route 64—the busiest route to the Grand Canyon. The least traveled road goes south and is Coconino County Route 73, or Perkinsville Road. This is the back road that we’re using for this month’s project.
If you’ve never heard of the town of Perkinsville, it’s understandable. It’s been a ghost town ever since its lime quarry shut down in the 1950s. Several families still live in the Perkinsville area, but its biggest claim to fame is the Verde Canyon Railroad stop, where they turn the train around. Also, if you’ve ever bought Arizona red flagstone, it comes from neighboring quarries between Drake and here.
To get to our road, you take 4th Street south from downtown Williams, to where it changes name at the town’s edge. The paved two-lane road winds through Cataract Canyon past a handsome masonry dam and reservoir. The railroad built it to supply water for the steam trains, and the name, Santa Fe Reservoir, has stuck. Shortly after, the road climbs up and over the east shoulder of Bill Williams Mountain, and you’re quickly in a ponderosa pine forest.
Within minutes you reach the road’s crest, and open pastures appear. Here you’ll see hiking trail signs that direct you to a trail that climbs to the mountain’s 9253-foot summit—should that be something on your bucket list. Further along, there’s another side road that goes to the Williams Ski Area. I didn’t even know that Williams had a ski area.
As Anne and I drove along the downhill slope, juniper replaced the tall pines, and large fields of yellow wildflowers were all around us. The good rains that we’ve had this summer have been beneficial for the flowers. We continued south on CR 73 until we turned east onto White Horse Lake Road. We were out after a weekend of rain, and although its surface is packed gravel, it’s navigable even for a 2wd sedan.
Since the flowers were so profuse, I wanted to take their picture with the sunlight beaming down on them, but a cumulus cloud got in the way every time I stopped Archie. I played this cat-and-mouse game several times before I captured this week’s featured image. I call it Yellow Field. I don’t know the flower’s actual name, but it’s the same weed we’ve been spraying for the past month in our yard. Wildflowers is weeds—who’d have thunk?
You can see a larger version of Yellow Field on its Web Page by clicking here. Next week, we’ll show more of the scenery we found on White Horse Lake Road. Come back then.
Until next time — jw
Jim, in your emails recently (the last two) the picture links have not been working and we’re not seeing them. Is that link to your blog broken?
To other readers;
Scott and I have fired off a couple of emails to try and troubleshoot this problem. I’m not sure if this condition is in the Word Press system or in the phone (Android and/or iPhone). Android has a new flag at the top of the email that asks if you want to show the pictures and if you confirm, it asks if you always want to see pictures from this person. It then sets a new configuration.
I want to see if Scott is using an iPhone and if it’s doing the same thing. Stay tuned.
Scott is using an iPhone/iPad with the built-in “Mail” Client. It’s worked perfectly until the last two times, but we also just switched to IOS 15.
Hmmm………
I went to my computer and opened the failed email there and it worked. I use Thunderbird Email Client there to handle email.
Hmmmm……
Lovely !
Looks like the cat caught the mouse.