COMPLETED: Prescott NF Run. The famous Senator Highway

[KE7WOX]

So last week me and my friend Evan, who just replaced his STS with an 85 Toyota truck, planned on going somewhere on Thursday, since we had nothing to do in town (the few things I had to do there was no way I was doing them during orientation day, no way). So we planned on heading down the paved part of Walker Rd, then take Big Bug Mesa Rd, then take the easy part of Poland Junction Rd into SR-69 and call it a day.

Since this took less than an hour, when we got to the Poland Jct intersection, we decided to head up the "difficult" part of the road back to the Senator Highway into Prescott, then we decided to head up to the Mt. Union Lookout, but we missed the spur. We had only been offroading for about an hour, so we took the decision of heading down the Senator Highway all the way to Crown King.

The last time we ran Poland Junction, at stock height, it took us 3.5 hours to cover the 5 miles of road between the Senator and Big Bug Mesa Rd. It took us 30 minutes this time.

Then we took the Senator Highway, 26 miles to Crown King. About 4 hours total time. The road wasn't that bad, only a few sections were moderately bad, and one did require some observation (and picture taking). We made it to Crown King, where we had lunch at the Saloon, then headed back on the frontway, which was only about 1.5 hours back to Prescott, first on dirt and then on pavement (SR-69).

[teebes]

Good stuff! I still need to save some time to really explore that area.

Now, how about some more pics

[janesy86]

Looks like a good ol' time. Nice scenery! And diggin' that Saloon.

[KE7WOX]

That's all I have for pics right now, as we did not carry a camera crew like in the past. I have some that I shot on a 35mm roll, but it will have to wait till I get the rolls back from Kansas -I'll send them in tomorrow.

That saloon is from like the mid/late 1800s and AFAIK, it was in Oro Belle (now extinct) and then they disassembled it and hauled it to Crown King by animals. It's survived several fires, including the 2008 Lane Two fire which almost burnt the entire town to the ground. Oro Belle does no longer exists and now sits close to the famous backroad to Crown King.

So far that's the most I've traveled for a sandwich/hamburger, and it was worth it. As my friend said, f*ck Jerome, this is the place to be.