Crown King

half-day road trip

After a lazy morning, Saori and I struck out on a road trip around 1 PM. Google Earth had revealed a small town up in the forest topped peaks northwest of Phoenix, and by measuring the distance, I established it was less than 90 miles away from the center of Phoenix. Pine forests, closer than Prescott. So we headed out of town on I-17, took the Crown King exit near Bloody Basin Road, and immediately hit a dirt road. According to the directions, Crown King was 26 miles down this road. What the heck, we were here, the road was not that bad, so we took it. Slow driving, less than 20 miles an hour on an "improved" road, (improved insofar as there were no major boulders in the middle) through rolling desert scrub. It was actually kind of peaceful. Something about a landscape with no asphalt or concrete.

We came first to the town of Cleator, which incidentally is for sale, although it had a great clapboard bar/general store we stopped at for a coke and some chips. The folks on the porch drinking beer and talking looked like they'd been out in this tiny desert town for a long long time. Weatherbeaten faces, long scraggly beards, giant faded hats, and the men were even worse. The barkeeps were friendly though. Didn't give us a hard time about using cards as stupidly, we'd neglected to bring any cash. It's amazing that even when the bathroom is crudely attached to the main building, and the main building is the largest structure in a hundred square miles of desert, they still take visa or mastercard.

Actually we liked Cleator more than Crown King, although it literally comes down to which one had a more personable general store.

We pressed on to Crown King, the road getting steeper, narrower, and more rocky as we went up. Every other vehicle on the road was either a truck or an SUV. I did see a Subaru sports wagon slink by, but it almost seemed embarrassed to be there. The Prius handled surprisingly well, and I wonder if mine might have been the first to make it to Crown King. It took better than an hour from the interstate to the town, and if we were to go again, we would go early in the morning and with a friend who had a high-clearance vehicle.

No mistake, the views were spectacular driving up to the top of the mountain, and each place we passed had its own picturesque quality. Crown King sits on a pine-covered mountain top. The weather was at least 20 degrees colder than Phoenix, and there were a lot of ATV riders out there too. They had a general store with an integrated US post office inside the store, a fire station, and a cafe/bar/hotel. That seemed to be about it for Crown King. I'm glad we went, but don't go expecting Las Vegas.

Driving down went a lot faster. We took an alternative route back to the interstate, which ran us through Bumblebee, a town with the same size as Crown King, all of 7 houses on the main road plus a school. We stopped for a bite to eat at a Denny's outside of Anthem, and finally skirted a major traffic jam coming into the city by way of Cave Creek road. All in all, a seven hour road trip that took us through three towns, and three types of landscapes.