The Apache Trail

It is tradition in our family to do four things on the Thanksgiving Holiday besides eating too much. First we love to go on a long exploratory drive that takes us somewhere new. We did this on Wednesday. After browsing the internet we discoved the Apache Trail. It is a road that goes through the salt water river gorges near Phoenix. It was recommended on the top ten things to do in Phoenix and so we decided to do it. We loaded the cars and left the dogs at home to get better acquainted with each other.

The first stop on the trail is a ghost town. I don't know the name of it but it is right outside the superstition mountains and they mined gold there. We walked around the whole town, took pictures and thought about buying lots of silly nic nacs that we didn't need. The only thing we ended up buying was lunch. But we had a lot of fun looking at the old mining town and posing for pictures for my blog.

Next we drove past a lake. It was pretty cool and I wish we had taken more pictures. I would love to go back and explore and swim. The scenery was beautiful.

After the lake the road turns into dirt and we had to slow down. We found a place near the top of the hills to go on a little hike. It didn't go anywhere very exciting but it was nice to get out of the car and walk around.

After the lake the road became quite narrow and the canyon that we drove through was pretty amazing.

It reminding me of all the other canyons of the Southwest and I really enjoyed seeing the cliffs mixing with the cactus of Arizona.

This bridge was really cool in my mind. We finally got back on pavement thus ending bumpy adventure. Stacey was a little more hesitant about the drive and she stopped and kissed the pavement when we reached it. This bridge is the largest spanning bridge without support in north America of this variety.

This is my favorite picture of the bridge. I might frame it someday if I have the right place.

After we left the bridge we had what we thought was a short drive back to Phoenix. It ended up being a couple of hours and we were very excited to actually arrive home. We made tacos and sent the kids to bed so we could play settlers of Cataan all evening.