It was Father’s Day here on Sunday so the dads and kids went off to see the Han Solo movie while Rach and I did a bit of shopping.  In the evening we headed to McCormick Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale where there’s a little train to ride around the park.

Yesterday we headed to Goldfield Ghost Town, an old gold mining town that hugs a little hill at the base of the Superstition Mountains at Apache Junction, east of Phoenix. Established in 1893, it was the site of the Mammoth Goldmine, which was a lucrative mine site until 1898 when the vein disappeared, the mine flooded, the post office closed and the town officially died. (We found out the definition of a ghost town around here is a town where the post office has closed down.)

Now, while the sign (oops I didn’t get a picture of that) says it’s an authentic ghost town, it turns out that military exercises in the desert in 1942 accidentally blasted the town with a mortar shell, and the remaining original buildings burned down. The town was rebuilt as a tourist attraction in the 1970s, so while it’s an authentic ghost town site, it’s not quite an authentic town. Regardless, it was a fun way to spend a few hours.

The small gauge train trip around the outskirts of town was a highlight, mainly due to our enthusiastic train driver/tour guide who seemed to have modelled himself on Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard.

Phoebe’s favourite part of the day was the mine tour – a replica mine. It was an interesting fifteen minutes.

This is the miners’ toilet – the honey bucket – it’s obviously the most interesting aspect of the tour for Blake.

But the ice cream at the end was the ultimate chill-out on a hot Arizona day!

Blake’s favourite thing: Auntie Rach asking Siri to tell dad jokes

Phoebe’s favourite thing: the mine tour