2006/03 Southwest USA trip (AZ-MN) - Boyce Thompson Arboretum |
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Thursday February 16th 
On our way into Superior, we’d seen a sign for the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, nestled in amongst the lava flows below Picketpost Mountain. It had looked interesting so next morning we drove back down the canyon through town and yes, this was a great spot to visit. “Arboretum” usually means trees but for this one it was mainly cacti.
We spent a couple of hours wandering around the displays for the Sonoran and Chihuahan Deserts, refreshing our memory of all the plants we’d seen. There was also a cactus garden with plants from other
deserts, like Argentina’s and Baja California’s.
This included some really strange plants, like the Baja’s boojum tree, on the right. There was even an Australian Walkabout section with a selection of gum trees, including the giant red gums we’d seen in Kinchega. It had a wool shed, complete with ancient machinery and a soundtrack of Banjo Patterson poetry. (Banjo wrote Waltzing Matilda.)
The place would be worth visiting for just the birds that thronged around the displays. Our problem was that we had to leave much too soon in order to get to a spot south of Safford before the 
weekend crazies arrived. This spot is known as the Hot Wells Sand Dunes, and Sandie was looking forward to a peaceful soak in the desert. So we set off back along the Queen Creek Canyon, a really scenic drive with great volcanic cliffs in all directions.
This led us to the towns of Miami and Globe which stretched for twenty miles along the highway, with huge mine dumps hovering above them. This has been a silver and copper mining area for many
years. Globe has a Walmart pharmacy and Sandie was able to get some magic ichthammol ointment there for dissolving the cactus spines that were still bothering her. This is smelly stuff made from a tar-bearing schist. It’s good for horses’ hooves but it didn’t work for Sandie.