We crashed early last night, both really tired and for me fighting off a bit of a cold. The upside of an early night I'd an early start.
When we checked in last night we were a bit excited to see the sign Free Hot Breakfast. Ever hopeful we could dodge the usual carbs and sugar without having to cook ourselves we went to the breakfast room. Their idea of hot breakfast is hot carbs and sugar, waffles or prepackaged oats chock full of dried fruit and sugar. Ah well, the coffee was ok but it was back to our room to cook eggs for me. Pete on the other hand went the whole hog, waffles with syrup and doughnuts lol
By 8.30 we were on the road again and very quickly crossed into Arizona. Like something out of the old westerns we went through a desert landscape with dark sharp toothed mountains in the background, the classic tall cactus in the foreground and an endless blue sky.
We passed a couple of power stations one of which was nuclear. All this sun and they don't seem to have anywhere nears he level of solar energy that we do.
We by-passed Phoenix in favour of heading out on the Superstition Hwy to cool sounding places like Superstition Mtns, Goldfield Ghost Town (far too touristy and much like similar places in Ballarat & Arrowtown), Tonto National Park, Apache Junction, Canyon Lake & Tortilla Flat. We had lunch beside Canyon Lake, after all the desert we've been through the last couple of days it was like an oasis. The landscape is quite different out there and not just because there's water, the rocks are more rounded and often covered in red and green lichens.
It's been comparatively cool today, hovering just under 40C with the occasional jump up to 43C.
We had eagles flying over us pretty much everywhere we went today, ever hunting prey in the scrub.
Heading out beside Phoenix we were on a six lane freeway with only light traffic. All day we'd seen a lot of cops with drivers pulled over getting tickets. Pete opted to set the cruise control a couple of MPH over the generous speed limits which varied from 65-75MPH. We found ourselves to be the only ones even close to the limit, everyone else was whizzing past us. We continued to see both drivers being ticketed, a lot of vehicles that had broken down and one that was facing the wrong way having had a tyre blow out. The highway art is very desert oriented, cactus, coyotes complete with foot prints, snakes and lizards.
We rose over 4000' before dropping back down near Sedona. We took the exit to Red Rock Canyon and were treated to the late afternoon light playing on the soaring red rocks punctuated occasionally with lightening and thunder. It was all very dramatic