3/4/2014 Cruise and a Pizza

(Tortilla Flat) (Mesa)

We were up and out early this morning because we had quite a drive to get to our destination.

We picked up Bonnie L. as she was going on the adventure with us today.

We had a pleasant drive, for the most part, to Tortilla Flat.  I say for the most part because I tried to be considerate of Dianne and give her the front seat because the rest of us had seen this area before.  All was good until we hit the switchbacks.  Not good.  At all.  I rolled down the window hoping fresh air would help but it didn’t.  I had to have the front seat. Bob found a pull off area and we switched places. 

We had some very nice scenery on the way.



We drove past the place where we were going to get on the river boat and went further up the road to a restaurant/tourist area.  Tortilla Flat is the name of the town and its population is,,,,drum roll please,,,,six.

Back in the early 1900’s this little town was a stagecoach stop.  Its situated within the borders of the Tonto National Forest on the history rich Apache Trail.

We had been to this area before but could never find a parking space available.  Today we got the LAST one!

We noticed that the road which passed this little town of Tortilla Flat had water running across it.  Snow melt from somewhere up north that fed the lake?

The first building we came to was the town museum.  It was the size of a good sized bathroom and I’m being generous with that.  I went in with about 7 others and claustrophobia set in and I had to get out.  From what I could see it was maps and pictures of years gone byon the walls.  A diorama under glass and not a whole lot more and if there was I couldn’t stick around to find out.  Quarters were definitely too close for me.

Outside was a replica of an old stagecoach and horses made out of metal.



We weren’t sure if we would be able to get into the Superstition Restaurant and Saloon for lunch or not.  Much to our delight, and surprise, we got a table right away.  We found that we got in just in time because minutes later there was a waiting list.

As in several places that we’ve been to, the walls were covered with dollars bills.  We asked our waiter how much he thought was on the walls, and trust me there is not an inch of wall that isn’t covered with a dollar bill and he replied, “Around $150.000.00!”


We all had very tasty meals and their well earned reputation for good food stands with us.

Dianne found a fella she thought was pretty special.

We wondered who this was.

 

It was getting crazy crowded so we opted to head back to the marina.  You know, it isn’t often that you have reason to use the word marina considering we are living in the desert.

The steamboat wasn’t back in dock yet so we had to wait a half hour or so.  It finally returned and our adventure continued.





We were able to get on the top deck in the open air so we had great seats for sightseeing.

Seems like a Saguaro (Sa-war-o) cactus will grow anywhere.

 

Bonnie was certainly enjoying the scenery.


But then, who couldn’t enjoy this?




Our hour and a half cruise was over way too soon.  Besides the scenery we saw big horn sheep but they were up too high for me to get a picture.

We headed towards Mesa so that we could go to Organ Stop Pizza for dinner.  We had been here about 6 years ago and I wrote a detailed blog post about it then.  You can read it here.  I didn’t get any pictures this trip to write home about.  We each ordered individual pizzas and sat back enjoyed the organ music as we ate.

Wow.  A nice drive (for the most part) a delicious lunch, a fun cruise, beautiful scenery, great friends, good pizza, toe-tapping, sing-along music, who could ask for more?

A fun day was had by all.