More old Arizona

More Pictures from Sil Nakya

These two kids belonged to the man who came out to visit with us. They were so cute!

This was the corral at Sil Nakya. There were two horses in it. I don't remember seeing a wagon, but there must have been one, because there were no cars. The main material they used to build the corrals was the ribs of dead cactus. Ocatilla was popular. They used it a lot for the shade they built over their outdoor kitchen. I have seen corrals made with ocatilla that were cut live and stuck in the ground. Many of them grew and turned green. Made a unique corral.

This windmill was at a village called "Queen's Well."Dave is looking up at the windmill, and Janet climbed the side of the tank to see how much water was stored. The women in this village brought us out a slice of heavy bread with jelly. I think it was the jelly they made out of the saguaro fruit.
Hank will recognize these mountains, but maybe not the country around it. From his photos, it looks like solid houses in front of the Superstitions now. We used to go water skiing every weekend at Apache Lake. Apache Junction was just that - just a junction with one service station. From there on, we went on a dirt road to Tortilla Flat, crossed a creek, and then on a two track road to the lake.

Apache Lake from the top of the hill going down into it. There was no room to meet anybody on the road, and whoever was pulling a boat had the right of way. Our brakes always got hot driving down to the lake. There were five adults and four dogs, every weekend, water skiing, eating lots of food and drinking beer. It was about a four hour drive from Silver Bell. Only for the young!