An American man said to us early on in our time here.

 “Every day is a good day and the ones that aren’t are great”

Well today was a great day and we still have more to do! 

We got up early and went to the desert botanical garden as it opened at 7am. The light and the shadows were so much better for taking photos and we took hundreds…. I was inspired by Vinces  black and white ones last Sunday. 

     After 3 hours it began to really hot up. We headed out of Phoenix enjoying our cars air conditioning . We followed the Apache Trail.

First it led us to the lost Dutchmans gold field. The Dutchman found loads of gold in the Superstition mountains but kept the location secret to his death. No one has managed to find it yet. We had a lovely lunch ( got the terminology right Oxford) in a cool wooden restaurant. 

 We went to a ghost town where you can go down the mines, but it was 106 degrees by then and I was melting so we just wandered around the town keeping in the shade.  

   Next the road took us up into the mountains up to the lakes. The colours were amazing, lime greens and whites. We saw 6 condors swooping over our heads as we ate an ice cream. The lake was deep blue. There were many huge cacti everywhere on the hillsides. 

   Now we are back in our hotel for a rest before we go back to the botanical gardens to see the “desert at night time”. More later.

Again the plants looked so different in the twilight and we got some good sunset pictures.

   
 Lilyana we saw tarantulas and snakes, lizards and geckos. Anona we had a tour of the night sky which was interesting. We saw Venus and Jupiter clearly. Louis we saw a frog and bugs and scorpions and Otis we were in the night garden!

Will post the photos later, love you all. We are in the hot hot desert heat from now on till we fly to Vancouver on June 13th