Local Adventures
We stopped by the Adobe Mountain Desert Railroad Park for Jen’s Museums of Phoenix quest. The park is a large undeveloped lot at the edge of Adobe Mountain Park that houses a number of train-related endeavors: the Sahuaro Central Railroad Museum, the Arizona Model Railroading Society/Arizona Garden Railway Society, the Arizona Model Railroading Society, and the Maricopa Live Steamers.
The park also contains some World War II-era Internment Camp Houses that were originally intended as temporary housing at the Leupp Isolation Center for Japanese-Americans during WWII.
We were there for the museum, but may have to return to see the internment camp houses, which I only discovered after looking up the official park name for this post.
We have a strong connection to the internment camp saga, having completed a quest to visit all ten of the Japanese internment camps in 2019 after accidentally running across the remains of Gila River/Butte Camp about a dozen miles south of our house (that episode probably deserves its own blog post). We’ve also visited a number of related “bonus” sites, including a visit to the very Leupp isolation site on the Navajo Reservation that these camp houses came from.
Anyway, the railroad museum contained all sorts of train-related paraphernalia, from models to old posters and memorabilia, to artifacts and such. There were several small trains you could ride, as well as a model train display. It was a quick visit for us, but if you love trains I bet this place is great for conversing with fellow aficionados.
We visited the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation Cultural Center & Museum today for Jen’s Phoenix Museums quest. It’s much more cultural center than museum, but we enjoyed a 90+ minute conversation with the museum director about the tribe’s history, culture, and its future.
A few video clips from paddling the Lower Salt River
I ran across a few short video clips from various trips down the Lower Salt River and thought I’d toss them into a short post here.