(Ms. Karen and I sometimes invite knowledgeable others to post on our website. Friend Sally Reichardt lives in the beautiful rolling hills of Sonoita and when she and her husband, Bryce, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary recently, they did so in Jerome. The following is her account of that memorable trip. You can read about our Fall visit to Jerome here. )

Our trip to Jerome. We got into town around 4:00, checked into the hotel (The Jerome Grand) and headed for dinner for our 6:00 reservation (at the Asylum Restaurant in the hotel). Our waiter was very nice & efficient. Dinner was pricey but good. When I made the reservation, well in advance, I asked for a nice table since it was our anniversary. The table (nor the others) wasn’t any nicer than others.

They marked down that it was our anniversary so offered us each blackberry sundae. When we appeared to be thinking about it (never having such a sundae before), he offered any other dessert. We stuck with the blackberry sundae. It was excellent and we were very glad we split one. After dinner, we couldn’t finish the one we split.

I forget what kind of beer Bryce ordered. I ordered a vodka martini – something I rarely drink. The hotel room was very nice. Big bedroom, huge bathroom, refrigerator, microwave, and a very large sunroom. Since we booked the room late, we really didn’t have much of a view.

There were no rooms actually available on our anniversary (Sat.) so we were there the night before. Seems they were well booked that night too. We spent Sat. just driving around, went to the museum (we had been there before) then headed to Chandler where we stayed on our actual anniversary. We ate at a Thai restaurant within walking distance of our hotel. It was very good (hard to screw up my Pad Thai anywhere though) and easily 75% less cost than the Asylum dinner.

The picture is of the bar and it was pretty empty throughout the night. The restaurant was quite busy. Mostly with people celebrating an event – like us. Or, so it seemed. One table of 6 or 8 was celebrating a girl’s birthday and another table was celebrating their 5th anniversary. Overall, I’d say there were 6 tables with diners. Maybe more. The restaurant didn’t seem all that big. I forget what mine was called but it was beef tenderloin pieces (very good & tender) on top of fried (I think) rice.

Had spinach leaves, cauliflower, broccoli and a couple snap peas. It was quite good but the rice was floating in the juice. Ok for me but Bryce would not have liked the rice. He likes rice kind of fluffy or dry so to say. His dinner had filet mignon pieces as well. Not sure what all he had but his was on noodles. Their bread, served before dinner, was very good. There was snow on the sides of the hills and sides of the roads. Not a lot but some. I imagine not too many people travel to Jerome at this time of the year, although the Hotel was full over the weekend.