You may remember a post I’d written called Prescott Bound: well after a 6-hour direct red-eye flight the Say ‘Ohana has landed, and we (and Prescott) may never be the same again! Traveling to tour a new place is one thing; it is quite another to do so realizing it will be your child’s next home away from home for four years.
It hasn’t taken us long at all to see that this will definitely be a change for my son ” no sandy beaches or palm trees here! I must say those saguaro cactus are very impressive though…
Arriving on a Sunday and quite travel weary, we spent our first day getting acquainted with downtown Prescott.
It was easy to see why Prescott is one of those places called “Everybody’s Hometown.” White picket fences rule here: most of the residential side streets look like a scene out of Leave it to Beaver — just add quite a few cowboy hats and boots and the occasional hitching post. There is no doubt Arizona has deep Wild West roots.
We learned that 34,000 people call Prescott home, but most of them must have been out somewhere else on Father’s Day, for we felt like we pretty much had the place to ourselves. However another reason was probably that the dry heat was stifling today. We’re at over 5200 feet in elevation, but it was still about 85 degrees out and we all missed Hawaii’s humidity as our skin started to crackle in irritation; we islanders are not used to this.
There definitely is a very historic feel here, and a real sense of place: you quickly learn (and see for yourself) that 525 buildings in Prescott are on the National Register of Historic Places. Someone else said more than 700 … not sure who is right, but even the 525 is an awful lot for the small size of the town. It’s even more surprising when you find out that a widespread fire claimed the town in 1900 and burned it to the ground.
We’ll be here for four days getting a better feel for the lay of the land, and seeing if we can discover Prescott’s Aloha spirit. I’m sure it’s here in bushels. Aloha y’all.