Forgotten and abandoned, but not gone.

Found in Superior AZ. It seems like every small town has several of these. What used to be thriving little towns are in decline as the younger generations move to more urban and promising environments. Helping (Causing?) that decline are the new highways and interstates that bypass these communities in the name of "Progress". It used to be that 300 miles was the reasonable limit to what you could travel by car in a day. So these little towns served that traffic by providing convenient lodging, fuel, auto repairs and restaurants.
This photo has been manipulated and stylized by Photoshop HDR. More on that later.

Apparently, when Superior was a thriving "Metropolis" and civic pride ran high, many of the businesses had murals depicting local activities painted on the side of their buildings. This is one such mural. It has seen better days and the business is closed.

Here's another. This business is a cafe and is open. Looks like they have recently refurbished the mural.

And here's the Superior VFW - Patriotically open for business . . . !

Shortly thereafter you find Clifton where you better fuel up, check your oil and stock up on snacks and drinks, as you'll have another 90 miles before you find any more services. You'll climb a couple steep switch-backs, pass the cut-off for Morenci and this is what you see. This is the face of the Morenci Mine, behind which is miles of open-pit copper mining. This is the largest Copper mine in the US and the second in the world, behind a copper mine in Chile. It's owned by Freeport-McMoRan who employs 2000 people at this site. Morenci is a company town and all the housing is owned by the Morenci Mine. Almost everyone who lives in Clifton and Morenci is employed at the mine. The Morenci Open Pit Copper Mine operates non-stop, processes 700,000 tons of rock a day, and produces about 840 million pounds of copper a year. You can find more information on the Morenci Mine and copper mining in general by doing an internet search on the term Morenci Mine.

This is a composite panorama of 4 photos taken from an overlook on US191. At this point, the pit appears to be over a mile wide and over a mile long.
The next photo should give you some perspective.

This is an enlargement of the area just at the center of the panorama. At the top of this photo you can see some shovels operating and filling trucks around them.
The tires on those trucks are almost 8 feet in diameter.

Here's one of the tires at the overlook.

And here's the size of the tire - if you can make it out through the graffiti - it's 46" wide and 90" in diameter. It's a tubeless radial no less..!
(On graffiti - done by sad people with very low self-esteem. They have to be noticed somehow and this is a (relatively) painless to get their name somewhere. Sad.)

This is a view of the road I've just traveled from the mine. This vantage point is two switch-backs from what you see.

After climbing for 30 miles or so, it's overcast and spitting rain. I've already seen snow on the side of the road. This is a "Vista" along the way. This is an HDR photo. That is, High Dynamic Range. This one is a composite of three photos, one shot at the proper exposure, one overexposed at 1 stop and one underexposed at 1 stop. The photos are combined using the properly exposed parts of each. The underexposed image will have the highlights properly exposed, the overexposed image will have the darks properly exposed and the middle image will have the mid-ranges properly exposed. In theory. In reality you have a lot of control how the images are merged. This one is a bit stylized, like the first image on this page and the "edges" of the images are enhanced somewhat and some are softened. In this way you can see things in a photographic image you would not ordinarily be able to see - like the mountain peaks and ranges in the mid-range and detail in the foreground. Hope that helps!!

On the way between Morenci and here, I did see a small brown bear. I know. There are only black bears in AZ. I'm just telling you what color this one was. Unusual to see one but they are in this area. I didn't get a photo of it because there was a car coming the other way that almost hit it. In my hurry to stop the car and grab my camera, he scurried off up the hill, out of sight. I had the wrong lens on the camera anyhow.

The next stop and the stay for the night, was Springerville. I stayed here - I sacrificed so you don't have to. Don't stay here. Please. I generally try to stay at local motels and lodges as they are generally pretty good and also inexpensive. Inexpensive in this case, but not good. The reviews I found on-line were generally pretty good. Bunch of idiots I'd say. Again, do yourself a favor and don't stay here. There are a half-dozen other places nearby.

So after a night in a noisy motel in Springerville on a crappy king-size mattress, I headed north to Holbrook AZ. After fueling up I stopped at the Wigwam Motel, a Route 66 Icon. Had you traveled Route 66 in its prime, you'd have given your left arm to have stayed at the Wigwam. I've been past several times in the past 15 years and figured one time I'd give it a shot and spend a night. Well, maybe. The motel consists of the office, closed when I stopped at 9 am, and a dozen concrete Wigwams which serve as rooms. Parked all around are vintage cars from the Route 66 era. Some even have current tags on them. In any case, it looks to me like the place is falling into disrepair, just like everthing else in Holbrook. All the paint needs scraping and refreshing, cracks need repair and the vintage cars are in need of a LOT of care. If the outside is like that, what does the inside of the rooms look like?

Here's a photo of some of the "Wigwam" rooms. Any new car you see is a visitor staying in one of the rooms. All the vintage cars are props.

So after Holbrook I back-tracked about 20 miles to the entrance of the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert National Parks. Don't be fooled. At the entrance road off US 180 it looks like there are National Park museums and retail outlets on either side of the intersection. They are not. They are private retail stores selling petrified log products from their private land and geodes from who knows where - at pretty exhorbitant prices too. Stop and look. Leave your wallet in the car. The real entrance to the National Parks is a half-mile further and the Visitor Center, above, is a half-mile further than that.

There is a nice Interpretive Trail behind the Visitor Center. Pick up a guide and walk the trail. It explains a lot about the Petrified Logs found in this area. Basically, the body of an ancient log has been replaced with minerals from the soil over the eons. In raw form, I'm not too impressed - rather drab. But, cut and polished, as you find in some of the retail (rip-off) stores in the area, they can be quite attractive. Just not the sort of thing I'd decorate my house with.

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