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Jolly Boys Outing Day 2 Sunday May 13th 2012

Sunday - American Mother's Day.
A wonderful night's sleep.  Awake and refreshed.
I had a lovely early morning swim and then we set off in search of brekkie.
We went to one of the restaurants in the resort and found that people had all made reservations.
The guy at the desk said he would check to see if they had any space available.  He came back and told us we were luck as there were two seats.
Brill.
He told us that it was a Mother's Day Brunch and Philip started to follow him to the table.  I then asked him how much that would be.
$38 each was the reply.
We made our excuses and left.
By the time they had added all the usual bits and pieces on to the bill that would have been about $100 just for breakfast.
It took a while, as everywhere was crowded but we did find somewhere else.

Then off to the Desert Botanical Gardens.
This turned out to be a bit of an adventure. 
It was quite amazing to see how different the landscape is out there.
It was also very hot.    It was around 106F (43C) I think but it is deceiving because it is so dry.
After we had been wandering around a bit, saw a couple of lizards,  a hummingbird and lots of cacti, I started to feel a little odd.
I had been drinking water all the way round.  We had started off with a cold drink and we kept the cups which we replenished from water fountains dotted along the way.
I then began to feel very odd.  I needed to get into an air conditioned building.
There was one at the beginning of the trail so we made our way towards it.  It seemed to take forever but eventually we made our way inside.
It was the gift shop which was almost empty as it was being refurbished.
I found an empty shelf on the floor and sat down.
After a few minutes I saw the lady from behind the counter walking towards me.  "Oh bugger", I thought, "I bet she is coming to tell me off for sitting on the shelf."
She wasn't.  She was very concerned, asked if I had been drinking water and then insisted on getting me a cold,wet towel to put on my face, neck and arms.
I had a touch of heatstroke.  I suppose she has seen it many times.

She was extremely kind and very concerned.
Philip, meanwhile took photos of me.
My face, neck, arms etc were very bright red. 
He was worried about me but this was a photo opportunity he could not afford to miss.   Blog Fodder as he put it.
The nice lady told me to stay there for as long as I needed, she then showed us a shortcut back to the car so that I wouldn't be out in the sun for long.
It took hours for my colour to return to normal. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, when I felt better I had another swim to cool down.   We found something to eat in the resort bar.
We did notice that everyone seems to say "Y'all" a lot, don't hear that in Milwaukee.
Time for another lovely night's sleep - or not as it turned out.
The people upstairs (crowd of blokes) decided to party until 4am.   I called security at around 2.40am but it didn't seem to make much difference.
Sigh......there will be more to this side of the story to follow.

posted by Sue Banks @ 1:57 PM