Water in the Desert

What can be more precious to a desert state than water?  Yesterday afternoon Roe took me on a brief tour of some of the water features in the desert around and in Mesa. 

But first we had to drive through the desert mountains.

See that large cone shaped mountain in the center of the picture below?  That's the site of the famous Lost Dutchman Mine.  Apparently the Dutchman (politically incorrect terminology now) buried his treasure in the shadow of this point, known as Needle Rock.  Referring to its shadow, he said the treasure is sitting on the point of the needle, but he neglected to state what time of day or even what day or time of year the shadow would be in the right spot.  Hundreds of would be millionaires have tried to find his lost treasure, but to this day it remains lost.

Needle Rock

It's still early enough in the year for the mountains to have green on them.  There were a lot of saguaros growing in these hills.

They almost look like the Rocky Mountains of Alberta...almost, but not quite.

And then we came to the beautiful Salt River.

Salt River

There were several groups of people tubing down the river.  It looked like such fun on such a hot day.  Everytime a group went buy we would yell at them to wave and smile and as they were passing us, Roe would shout out "I want to go with you". 

 

Farther along the road, or was it back a bit, I don't know.  I got all twisted around.  Anyway we came to Saguaro Lake - a man-made lake in the desert with a marina and people waterskiing with hills covered with saguaro cacti all around.

The marina at Saguaro Lake

Saguaro Lake

Back in Mesa, we drove to a development called Fountain Lake.  The major feature of this development is the world's tallest fountain.  Every hour on the hour for 15 minutes, it shoots a stream of water 350 feet into the air

The base of the fountain

In full shooting mode

The wind was blowing and made beautiful patterns in the air.

I loved this venture through the waters of the desert.  It was such a hot day so I appreciated the water even more.  The desert is truly a beautiful place.