Sanguine

Twenty-two photos from our roadtrip from Mesa, through the Tonto Forest, to the Roosevelt Dam along SR-88. From Wikipedia: "It (88) roughly follows the route of the Salt River, and between Tortilla Flat and Roosevelt Dam, is an unpaved, winding mountain road that largely dates from the 1930s."

A mesa from afar, saguaro in the foreground.

Broken glass on volcanic rock, covered in chartreuse lichen that just glows in the sunlight.

An opuntia in the background, a joshua tree in the foreground.

Joshua trees are among some of the scarier things I've ever seen.

My stepfather, JG, overlooking a verdant valley.

A piece of pure quartz I pulled out of a rock we were sitting on.

Second stop, Canyon Lake. Nothing sounds as good to me as water lapping against rocks. Makes me think of sitting on the dock at my mom's house on the Hudson River.

Shards of broken bottles, chipped almost completely smooth from being stepped on in the rocks.

Third stop, Tortilla Flat. Their eatery- their one eatery- is about as campy as you can expect, with endearingly crappy diner fare to match. (Yes, the walls are covered in dollar bills.)

That's my mother's bespectacled head in the foreground.

An Arnold Palmer, anyone?

Back on the road, where the pavement ends. Literally ends.

See the road down in the basin? Nothing but rocky dirt.

Lone sycamores.

There was something bizarre and spooky about this stretch of 88. The way the dead looking trees and scrubs crowd over it, it's almost like being lost in the middle of Nowhere, Kenya. I can't imagine how scared I would have been had it been night.

Apache Lake.

Finally, the dam. This is a photo of the back side of it- I didn't get one of the front, so I'll share the one from Wikimedia Commons:

The bridge.

This was the last stop before we crossed it and came home.