After a swim and breakfast we went to collect our hire car so we could explore the nearby Apache Trail. It’s billed as the most scenic drive in Arizona (by Frommers) and has a few interesting places along the way.
Before we got to the first one, Goldfield Ghost Town, we had to deal with some disappointment from the back of the car. The conversation went like this:
The Big One: “When will we get to the desert?”
Me: “This is all the desert.”
The Big One: “Oh” in a very disappointed voice.
The Little One: “Where is the sand like the beach?”
My Lovely Husband: “This is sand, just not white sand and this is a semi-arid desert, so things like cacti can grow here.”
Both girls, now sounding even more disappointed: “Oh”!
They soon got over their disappointment when our first stop was a ghost town.
We arrived just in time to take the tour of the original gold mine, one of the richest in the USA at one point. This involved going underground and then into a mine lift, which if it wasn’t original certainly was a very good replica. It clanked and felt pretty unsafe and as I stepped in holding onto the Little One very tightly it felt like it might have been a very silly idea. Luckily the lift only went down one floor and I was very relieved to get out again!
As we were shown around the mine in it’s now climate-controlled coolness (it would have been over 40c down there without it…) it really brought home how much people were willing to risk. The men who worked down there were given 4 candles to last the long day shift and if the candles ran out you had to keep working in the dark, and that included putting in the explosives and running as fast as possible in the opposite direction! And the dark down there is real blackness. The lights were turned off completely at one point (no glow in the dark EXIT signs down here!) and it was quite frightening. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere that dark before – you could not see a thing, not even a cliched hand in front of your face!
The workers rarely lived past 40 due to the dust damaging their lungs and also the severe injuries you could sustain from the equipment and mine collapses. The thing that the girls found the funniest was the double toilet (room for you and a friend!) that some poor soul had to push around the mine for the miners to use. If you missed your turn it would be hours before it came back. This was used for smuggling gold out though as it had to be emptied, ladle by ladle, at the end if each shift. A mucky job but if you got away with it, then you could definitely give up the toilet pushing job!
Eventually the owners realised something was amiss and starting searching it every time. The punishment for stealing? Hanging. And the gallows are still there in the town, right next door to the one room jail.
After a drink in the saloon bar, and my Lovely Husband being drawn into a political discussion about Atta Turk with the bar tender who was born in Turkey, we rewarded the girls with ice creams in waffle cones which they saw being made. Delicious, and hopefully enough to keep them going for a while…
Back on the road, we headed up to the three lakes, passing several different sorts of cacti and even some in bloom with bees buzzing around them:
The mountains and canyons were beautiful and it was surprising how far up the cacti grow. I’m writing this on my phone and I haven’t got any good pictures on here showing the grandeur of the landscape but it was so good that for over an hour both girls just looked out of the windows and didn’t ask how long it was until we could go home! (Quite impressive for a 4 and a 6 year old!)
When the tarmac road ran out, we kept driving on the dusty track, some of which was very twisty, with sharp falls on one side straight down into the canyons below, and room for only one car. Luckily we met no one going in the opposite direction!
It was all worth it to have a picnic in the back of the car (a tailgate picnic) at Apache Lake.
It was beautiful and peaceful – we were the only ones there. We even got to paddle in the warm lake and watch some condors (we think) circling above us and landing on the beach. They are enormous birds!
We didn’t make it to the third lake, Roosevelt or further round to see the site of an ancient Native American village, as it was getting late. And we always like to leave something for next time…
