Finding old friends in our new town

We like driving around a new town, finding things to explore and seeing what life might be for its full-time residents.  As we were driving through a new area of Prescott, we saw a big banner outside a local church.

We looked at each other in amazement.  We went to high school with a guy named "Ira Brown."  Could this be him?  A quick google search confirmed this was the same Ira that graduated from Beaver High School two years before we did.  We were going to have to "come and meet" that new pastor.  Since we haven't seen Ira in almost 37 years, you might say that all three of us have changed a little.  We showed up on Wednesday evening, and managed to intercept him in the parking lot as he got out of his pickup.  We were giggling as we greeted him because we assumed he wouldn't recognize us.  We had a great time introducing ourselves, until he realized who we were.

That led to an hour of laughing about old times at Beaver High School, and updating each other about the last three decades.  We were just sorry that his wife, Paula (also a Beaver alumni) was visiting their grandchildren in El Paso.  We would have loved to see her again.  We were also sorry that we couldn't stay around until Sunday to hear one of his sermons.  That just gives us another reason to come back to Prescott!

From church to exploring a saloon, we also made a stop in historic downtown Prescott.  Right off the courthouse square is a row of saloons called "Whiskey Row."  We had lunch at the most famous, the Palace Saloon.  It first opened in 1877, and the quarter-sawn oak and cherry bar is part of that original establishment.  

It's the oldest frontier saloon in Arizona, and USA Today calls it one of the 10 best bars in America.  This watering hole serves up a pretty mean half pound bacon cheeseburger that was big enough to split.  Here's a handsome cowboy coming out of those swinging saloon doors now!


Even though we are on permanent vacation, we still have to do normal people things like having the oil changed in the car and getting haircuts.  We accomplished both of these in Prescott.  Actually, Mark got the first hair cut.  When he came back with the right amount of hair still attached to his head, Denisa asked for the same stylist.  That might be our new system for getting haircuts on the road, as a bad haircut would be less traumatic for Mark than Denisa.  We also found a good dealership for the car's oil change.  When we dropped off the car at the local Honda dealers, we opted for a hike around the lake right in their back yard.

 Again, we were scrambling among the Granite Dells.  Sitting here is a little better than sitting in the customer lounge at the dealership!

Today's hike was around Willow Lake, another of the five lakes close to Prescott.  We are getting to be such locals that we have even learned how to pronounce the name of this town.  We found that Prescott rhymes with "Biscuit." 

We have seen some man-made pictographs among the caves in state parks in Texas, but we think the unusual markings on these granite dells must be God's pictographs.

The granite boulders go on and on, and we hiked for almost 8 miles getting around this lake.

Someone probably should have looked at the trail map a little more closely, because we were 3/4 around the lake when we realized that the last part of the trail was flooded.  We had to decide whether to hike 5 miles back, or get our feet wet to finish the circle.  We went for the wet feet, but it wasn't pretty.  We wouldn't recommend this circular path, but it was another adventure as we continue wandering His wonders!