The Long & Winding Road

After Barb and I brunched at IHOP, I had a full day on my own before catching the red-eye from Phoenix back to New York. She recommended a visit to Jerome. Back on Highway 89 as clouds moved in from the west, I couldn't resist a dirt road detour.

Methodists, enter here!  

The glorious view from atop Mingus Mountain, looking east toward Sedona, made the detour worthwhile.  But even an i-Phone 11 can't capture the majesty of the red rock cliffs in the distance.

Jerome claims to be the most vertical town in the U.S.  Highway 89 bears this out as it continues to weave back and forth.

It's easy to imagine Jerome's past.

This preservation of a small smelting furnace, fueled by coke imported all the way from Wales (via South America!), pays cool tribute to Jerome's history.  It was once home to Arizona's largest copper mine.

A bar down the street capitalizes on Jerome's former reputation as the "wickedest town in the West."

The miners needed a place to repent.

Serving a current population of just 450 people, the church can't get much use.  Maybe that's why this plastic priest stands beside the confessionals.  He really gave me a start from a distance with that disapproving stare.

Jerome has reinvented itself as a tourist and hipster hub.

 

No doubt, the skateboarder gets his hair cut at Puscifer, founded by the lead singer for Tool and A Perfect Circle.  Unfamiliar with the shop's symbol, it took me three passes on Main Street to find it.

It's the kind of place that fetishizes irreverence.  Mustaches appear on celebrity photos in the barber shop.

But Jerome's 19th century bones provide some novel gallery space, too.

I avoided the shops and explored the stepped neighborhoods where local artists lived and worked in what appeared to be highly curated environments.

It wasn't always easy to distinguish between art and raw materials.

I grabbed a souvenir

. . . and hung it from the door-handle of my Kia . . . . wait for it . . . Soul!  😈