AZ - Day 5 (CBD)

Today we decided to visit another garden/arboretum called the Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park., near a town called Superior. We headed out along the same route as the Goldmine but instead of turning off we carried on and the road became narrower, there were fewer and fewer cars on the road and the sat nav was telling us we had another hour to go when in fact we were only a few minutes away...we did start to think we were going the wrong way into the desert... its quite unnerving.  Although it appears there is nothing out there, you can see if you look carefully houses, one storey high blending in with the scenery.

So on arrival we thought we would have our normal coffee/drink before we started off on the mile long walk only to discover there was no cafeteria just a shop selling bottles of water and ice creams :(

Armed with a map and some pointers on what to look out for we started off on the walk.  Once again it was pretty warm but there were plenty of shady areas and seating along the way.  We saw some more humming birds.... no decent photos however and some pretty butterflies. Spotted a red cardinal, according to Paul, but could not get a decent photo.  It was very red and made lots of noise!!  The path started to wind ahead of us uphill but we kept up a steady pace.  After a while it went downhill steadily to some lovely shady areas but it was still hot down there.... Some photos below:

Tonight I fancied steak so stopping off at the supermarket on the way home we picked up a couple of huge sirloin steaks for 3$ a piece and they were delicious.