Exploring Arizona - week 1

My my, life is really tough!

As I posted in my last blog, the condo in Phoenix is pretty nice. We have spent quite a bit of time by the pool this week, the daily temperature was in the mid to high 80's every day although it is not humid and sticky like in Shediac but very dry and the heat even at 90 degrees is bearable.









Full view of the pool area


We spent the first few days catching up after a hectic time in Las Vegas. We explored our neighbourhood one morning. We are in a gated project which is just a stones throw from downtown Phoenix. We found a great park about seven minutes walk away, it is shaded with lots of palm trees. Phoenix is a very clean city.








A typical Scottsdale Gallery on the Art Walk


On Thursday night, we went to weekly Scottsdale Thursday Night Art Walk. Once a week the Studios and Art Galleries along Main St in Scottsdale have an event which usually features the attendance of some of the artists who are there to meet and greet the art walkers as well as showing and demonstrating their art. Many of the galleries offer refreshments as well as things to nibble on and Thursday featured a number of glass artists demonstrating their craft, it was delightful!






Travelling the Apache Trail


Friday, we were up early because we had planned to take a ride around the Apache Trail, a very scenic route through a desert_like terrain. We headed for our journey through the Superstition Mountains in the Tonto National Forest which began at Apache Junction. We travelled a couple of highways to get to Apache Junction and were very impressed with the flowering trees that adorned these roads.


The Apache Trail itself is about 40 miles of steep, winding and mostly unpaved road past magnificent scenery of twisted igneous mountains with dense forests of saguaro cactus and ferocactus trees and several deep blue man made lakes created by building dams along what is called the Salt River with a couple of old mining ghost towns along the way.
As soon as we left Apache Junction, we started seeing the large saguaro cactus trees pictured here. The ferocactus are more like large stumps growing out of the ground with protrusions which are more like lumps. In a very short time we had arrived at Goldfield an abandoned gold mine ghost town and we stopped to spend some interesting time there where most of the buildings are authentic to the 1880_1890 era.


Right after that, we began travelling the real winding, mountainous absolutely stunning trail which was just so full of breathtaking scenery. We stopped at many observation places along the way and just before noon arrived at Canyon Lake where we stoped to have lunch, they were featuring a Friday all you can eat fish fry so we had that. The pollock fish was good but not as good as the light battered fish at Deluxe in Moncton. About two miles down the road at what could be described as a horse stop called Tortilla Flat, we hit the dirt road which went on for over 22 miles through twisting, turning, winding up and down mountains. It was a long ride through to the Theodore Roosevelt dam but so stunningly beautiful, worth all the dust and every bump in the road. At one point, I forgot my clip-on glasses for my prescription glasses on the trunk of the car. I noticed that they were missing about five minutes after were left the last observation point so we were sure they were gone. Lo and behold, at our next stop, the glasses had slipped to the crack between the trunk cover and the car fender and the magnets that keep the clip-ons to the prescription glasses held the clip-ons in place on the trunk of the car. I was very happy to have them back.


We then travelled the 100 or so miles back to Phoenix through a different but longer route on regular USA highways and when we reached the condo in Phoenix, we both agreed that we had a very memorable day!.