Sight Seeing

I posted some photos over at the gallery of the Goldfield/Tortilla Flats drive we took on Friday and of the Boyce Thompson Arboretum tour we did on Saturday. I was able to actually walk the guided tour at the Arboretum which was about a mile and a half long. I had to use my cane but I am finally feeling good enough to be able to do some of things this trip was supposed to be about.

Goldfield is an 1890’s ghost town turned tourist attraction. We had lunch in the Saloon and bought some coffee from one of the merchants. I mention the coffee because the brand is named “Wake the Fuck Up". I had to have it even at $10.49 per pound. The coffee is quite good but the name is what got me. From there we had planned to drive up the same road to Roosevelt Dam but the road was blocked by a wash at Tortilla Flats so we stopped there. Roosevelt Dam was built during Teddy Roosevelt’s term and is made of masonry, large bricks. We will be going back to try again probably this week.

The road there is quite a windy mountain road which gave me a chance to drive the Jetta over that kind of road. The little car drives like a small sports car. It reminds me of the 1958 Austin Healey Sprite I had in college. Great fun.

The Arboretum was founded in 1920 by a philanthropic mining magnate who made his fortune in Montana. At one point his mining business was the third largest in the world, surpassed only by Cecil Rhodes’s De Beers and Sir Ernest Oppenheimer. He seeded the Arboretum with a $10,000,000 grant, a huge sum in 1920.

We arrived at 12:45 and serendipitously just as a guided tour was beginning. About a third of the way through my slow pace forced us to let the main group go on but there were two guides and one, Jan, stayed with us and we had our own personal guide as we went along. Quite cool and she was a very interesting lady who is a volunteer at the Arboretum.

The photos are here and here

Greg