A global tour

In order to celebrate mother's day, mom took me, Saori, and Tay whitewater rafting on the salt river. My previous experience with the salt river involved hot tubes, lots of college freshmen, and copious quantities of beer, so I was surprised to discover that before it becomes a floating house party, the Salt actually has some class 3 to class 4 rapids. This occurs way up, north of Globe, and deep in the heart of Apache lands. As the trip left the shore at 8:30 AM, several hours from Phoenix, I suggested we spend the saturday afternoon in Globe, so we would be fresh for the trip. I was curious about that part of Arizona, too since the 60 was the one road out of town I've never taken.

We left town after a leisurely morning, picking up mom first, then tay, and stopping for some Indian food on the way out. We grabbed some road supplies at Gold Canyon, and passed on into the wilderness.

I was impressed with the drive. It was as scenic, but not as hilly as the beeline out to Payson, and we very quickly passed through Superior, which looked like a cool little mining town. After less than two hours we arrived in Globe at the Days Inn where we got two rooms, one with a view of the pool, and one with a view of the hill directly behind the parking lot. My car actually got the best view, overlooking the town from the rise the hotel was situated on. Our check in girl was very confident on her views of the rafting companies. She thought Mild to Wild was fine, almost as good as the one she liked better, and that Chacos Mexican restaurant was much better than Irene's Mexican restaurant.

After we dropped our stuff off, we drove to the historic downtown of Globe, which was less than a quater mile long, now mostly bars, antique stores, secondhand clothes, and Tae-Kwon-Do studios. This old mining town was a dangerous place. We stopped for coffee at a small coffeeshop, which seemed to be filled with late teens and beatniks who were too cool for the sellout downtown phoenix art scene. It was a really nice place, very picturesque, and the blackboard announced happenings like the Globe Poetry Forum.

The town of Miami was a lot more happening. The downtown looked older and poorer, but there was a vitatlity there that comes from a more diverse use, definately helped by the local "boomtown" festival occupying the main street that weekend. A dry wash ran through the entire downtown, crossed by arched concrete bridges, which looked very Venetian. It was bizzare but a nice contrast. I'm still not sure what the festival was for, although the display of old gasoline engines turning wheels probably relates to it. Mom bought us all funnelcake which immediately sank to the bottom of our stomachs like the Titannic and slowly rusted. We wandered through an independant art gallery, with artworks which looked just like the art at first fridays, although we all picked up cheap woven trinkets from Mexico.

We went back to the hotel and played cards for an hour or so before heading off to a Mexican restaurant which was not terrible, but really made you wonder how bad the other place was. We parted ways after getting back to the hotel, planning on meeting at the car in the morning.