Don't Shoot Me, I Only Work Here

Lake Havasu Lake Havasu is an artificially created lake based around London Bridge in the centre of the resort. It is popular with Moorhen. Really popular. Sometimes you see big signs on fences that say thing like "Private, go away, secret, you're not wanted here", that sort of thing. Sometimes I just get the urge to see what is beyond these sort of signs, quite often I find that people just want to keep the really pretty views all for themselves. Lake Havasu Golf Club, if you've chosen to live in the middle of a desert, you may as well build a putting green on you front lawn. Discount for cash buyer.

London Bridge - Lake Havasu We arrived at Lake Havasu at dusk, found ourselves a nice motel then went out for dinner. The Lake Havasu Lights Festival was just begining. That's London Bridge, the focal point around which the resort was created.

Yuma to Lake Havasu In the morning we visited the gaol at Yuma, whihc is about the only touristy thing to do in town. We had read that there was a historic town centre, but a lot of the shops and restaurants were closed / deserted. The reception staff at the hotel laughed when we told them we were on holiday, they couldn't understand why anyone would want to visit Yuma, but they were very friendly and helpful and found us a really nice family run Mexican restaurant to eat at. Pigeons flying over Yuma rail bridge, with the road bridge just behind. Outside Yuma, in addition to the vast cattle fattening sheds, there are miles and miles of lettuce fields, they stretch along the road side as far as the eye can see. No rain seems to fall here, but they grow the most water hungry plants there are. The road, this was a driving holiday after all so we saw quite a lot of this view. Much of Arizona is flat as a pancake, but hills and mountains rise up out of the plain just like kids draw mountains, big steep peaks with no foothills. The scenery in the hills and mountains is stunning and the camera never really seems to capture the stark beauty your eyes can see. Suddenly amidst the desert, a lake and a river with miles of rushes crowding its banks and shallows. We set off from Yuma with the iea of staying at Quartzsite, but this turned out to be miles upon mile of mobile homes and big camper vans, a petrol station and three fast food outlets, so we pressed on Northwards to Lake Havasu. I love this hill, it looks like the peak from Close Encounters.

Yuma Yuma, close to the Mexican border, wasn't the most picturesque place we visited. In fact, this was the high point of our afternoon there, that and getting age checked at the Yuma branch of TGI Fridays. Note for any particularly stupid waiting on staff, I am 40, even with the best will in the world I don't look anything like 21. I'm at the sort of age when getting age checked is actually offensive, especially as the moronic waitress wouldn't let me buy a beer until I'd shown her my passport.

Arizona - Sonoma Desert Museum Desert Museum Website After beautiful Sedona we hit the road again and drove South to parched, sun baked Sedona. It's not a cactus, but I forget what it is, spiky though. The landscape, semi-scrub desert with lots of cowboy film cacti. A hummingbird, they are really fast, I seem to have lots of photographs of blurry green streaks at the edge of the frame, this one is the closest I got to getting one in good focus. ....and some more plants that I have forgotten the name of.... It was a good day out, I would recommend it to anyone in and around Sonoma.

Sedona When we were in Flagstaff, Arizona, people kept telling us to visit Sedona, they said it was really beautiful, so we did, and it was. We stayed in a nice motel with really nice rooms and it only cost about £25 / $50 because we had to go and see a timeshare presantation the next morning. In addition they gave us $40 of food / shopping vouchers which we could spend at restaurants in town and a free pass to the Christmas Lights Fayre. I had no intention of buying a timeshare so to get dinner and a room for that price was well worth it. The picture above was the view from our bedroom's balcony, pretty stunning ? This is the main street of pretty / touristy Sedona. Is is a wonderfully attractive place but does suffer slightly from an overabundance of timeshare / jeep tour sellers all trying to entice you in. Mrs YS with some strange piggy statues, these were by a local artist and based on Javelinas which are a kind of Peccary, or small pig like beastie. We had thought that while dining on the rim of the Grand Canyon that we were at the restaurant with the best view in America, but we thought that this was even more beautiful. These wonderful iron ore stained mountainous outcrops rise up all around Sedona which nestles in the midst of them. I went walking of course, as was described here in "Mad Dogs, Englishmen, Shit". We had already driven through some pretty remarkable landscapes, but I just had to get out on foot here, it was wonderful. You get much more from the land by walking on it. I dare say the bumpy, dusty jeep tours were a barrel of laughs, but you don't get the same feel for a place when roaring around in a motor vehicle. I walked up to the base of this formation before turning for home. After my hike I sat in the outdoor jacuzzi with a book, a couple of cans of lager and my camera to hand as the sun began to set. I could hear the gentle buzz of voices from the restaurant, and the happy shrieks of children made soft by distance, the warm water whirled softly around me and I did think that life really doesn't get much better then this.