Akky and Marina with Warrior	B17 and Red Mountain	Flying and having fun
Akky flying	Beautiful Apache Lake	Aerial view
Car below on Apache Trail	Dragonboaters on Apache Lake	Training camp
Apache Lake dragonboating

Apache Lake?   Where is that?   I wondered if it really had anything to do with Apaches. In Arizona…....maybe. With temperatures well below freezing in Toronto, and ice on Lake Ontario, the Canadian Senior Dragon Boat Club would hold a training camp there in March, to prepare for the World Championships in Australia in September 2007.

On the map it looked as if Apache Lake was a little more than 40 miles north east of Phoenix but I was told it would be a two hour drive or more. That should have been a clue to what would face us. In our rented car we took the freeway from the Phoenix International Airport toward the eastern suburbs of Mesa. That part of the trip was slow due to construction on the highway. We left the freeway a mile or two south of Apache Junction. From Apache Junction the two lane paved road headed into the dessert with the Superstition Mountains looming ahead. This was the start of one of America’s oldest roads, the Apache Trail. The shopping malls and subdivisions were replaced by desert, rocks and sparsely planted cacti with the occasional Saguaro protruding above the low vegetation. Yellow flowering bushes lined the road side. The Apache trail was an ancient Indian trail, widened by Apache and Pima labourers between 1903 and 1905 for the construction of the Roosevelt Dam 30 miles up river. We passed fewer and fewer side roads as we left the suburbs behind. Approaching the massive wall of mountains, we passed the state park with its hiking trails up the mountain and the ghost town of Gold Field, now a tourist attraction with art galleries and restaurants in the old buildings. That was the last remnant of civilization until we reached Canyon Lake, aptly named for the sheer cliffs rising along its shores with a marina, restaurant and steamboat on one end. The road continued through canyons and along the edge of mountain cliffs into Tortilla Flat, once a stage coach stop and pony express depot. A restaurant, museum, post office and shops occupied some of the original old buildings. Some buildings were left empty in their original state, reminders of long ago. I felt as if I had been whisked back into the days of the old Wild West. We parked the car in front of an old abandoned hotel which had a faded wooden sign saying rooms, 25 cents a night. We walked to the restaurant and sat in the outdoor patio for lunch and were entertained with country and western songs by the Tortilla Flat band. Once past Tortilla Flat, the road became a narrow dirt road cut from cliffs with soft sandy shoulders and no guard rail, at times accommodating only one car. On we went to Fish Creek Hill with its great vistas into a canyon if you dared to look. The steep road with its switchbacks descended almost two miles into a canyon. We passed a side road to a ranch and finally after a tortuous drive we came to Apache Lake. It is more than a mile’s descent down a narrow side road to the resort, our home for the next week. It consisted of a restaurant, two motel buildings, some cottages, an RV park and a marina.  It was situated about half way down the 17 mile long Apache Lake. From there it was another 12 miles to Roosevelt dam and the much larger Roosevelt Lake.

The next week, for me, consisted of an early morning and late afternoon practice on the water. Apache Lake was about the most spectacular wilderness setting yet for dragon boating, with the cliffs and peculiar geological formations towering over the long narrow lake. The middle of the day was free for my husband and me to sightsee, hike, do a trail ride, and even fly, while the rest of the team was doing dry land training. I feel I really haven’t seen a place until I have flown over it.

The Phoenix Chapter of the Ninety-Nines, the International Organization of Women Pilots, responded to my query about flying in the region. The Chapter Chair Susie Mitchell sent out the message to the rest of the chapter and three people responded. Kitty Pope, who, besides being a pilot is also a dragon boater, invited me to watch a practice on Tempe Lake in Phoenix; and Judy Yerian who said they used to have a boat on Apache Lake and thought I would enjoy the beautiful surroundings. I was awed at the spectacular scenery. Marina Saettone invited my husband and me to fly. Marina is also a helicopter pilot, the first female offshore helicopter pilot to be hired by Chevron. She flies to the oil platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and works a seven days on, and seven days off cycle. I was lucky. It was her seven days off. She rented Piper Warrior N8082K from Falcon Executive Aviation for the trip along the Apache Trail. As we were taxiing for the run up we came head to head with a beautifully restored B17 shining and glittering in the brilliant Arizona sun.  We watched it take off against a back drop of Red Mountain. What a sight. We took off into a clear sunny blue sky and light winds toward the north west over the Phoenix suburb of Mesa with its flat urban sprawl of bungalows and citrus orchards. The high rises of down town Phoenix were in the distance. A left turn back towards the east took us toward the Superstition Mountains with its legend about the Dutchman and his missing mine of gold. Maybe we could spot it from the air.

I saw the needle rock formation and cave we hiked to, on the side of the mountain. Tortilla Flat looked even more isolated in the dessert valley surrounded by mountains than from the road. From the road you have no idea that there are only more mountains and more dessert behind the settlement. Canyon Lake looked as spectacular from the air as the ground as we flew over the marina.  Horse Mesa Dam, which we had paddled to in the dragon boats, appeared in one of the narrow canyons. It was the start of Apache Lake. Apache Lake looked like it was surrounded by a mini Grand Canyon, even more remote from the air with no sign of habitation. Finally in the distance through the canyons we could spot Apache Lake Resort with its side road winding down to the lake. We followed the lake and the Apache Trail to Roosevelt Dam and Roosevelt Lake where we would turn around. This is where the oldest road, The Apache Trail came to an end. In the mountains surrounding Roosevelt Lake we spotted the ancient Tonto Cliff Dwellings. My husband and I had wandered through the ruins earlier in the week. We turned in the Tonto Basin, which now is mostly occupied by Roosevelt Lake, near the abandoned private air strip of Grapevine. Marina had flown this far allowing me to take pictures. I took over the controls. Now it was my turn and what a thrill that was. Back we flew at 4500 ft over the Roosevelt Dam and into the canyons formed by the Salt River which turned into Apache Lake. The canyon tops were just below me but towering to the right and well above me were The Four Peaks at almost 8,000 feet. We followed the lakes surrounded by canyons and cliffs back to the flat suburbs of Mesa. I lined up with Red Mountain protruding from the flat dessert floor, flew along side it as I descended well below the floor of Phoenix Class B which started at 8,000 ft and lined up with Falcon Field where the B17 was still doing circuits. We logged a little more than an hour for what has been one of the most spectacular flights I have ever done. A great big thanks to the Phoenix Chapter for welcoming me and particularly Marina for taking me flying.