Casa Grande, AZ

We’ve now been in Casa Grande since the 13^th of January.  This park is much different than our last one.  It’s not as hippy, funky and the people are a bit harder to get to know.  It’s nice however that we are much closer to a grocery store and can go a bit more spontaneously.  They also have lots of activities here.

Places Visited:

 

Casa Grande:

 

In our early explorations of the area, we found out why the town is called Casa Grande (Spanish for “large house.”)  There are ruins about 30 minutes outside town of an ancient village built by Native American in about 1300.  The people are considered remarkable for the time because they cultivated the desert.  They did this by hand-digging canals with only rough hewn tools (made out of local bushes or trees) to create irrigation canals from the once thriving Gila and Salt rivers.  They grew crops like corn, beans, squash, tobacco, cotton and agave to add to the natural plant foods available such as saguaro, cholla, hedgehog and prickly pear cacti.  They also hunted rabbits, mule deer and big-horned sheep.  During the time the village was occupied, they built the great house of Casa Grande.  No one knows its exact purpose.  Its sheer size and amount of effort and manpower suggested it was a very important building.  An interesting feature of this building are the small holes in the exterior walls.  One of these holes was perfectly positioned so that people gathering inside the building during summer solstice could see the setting of the sun indicating the end of a season.

It isn’t known why the people abandoned the once flourishing village.  During a lecture, we were told that a supposed reason for abandonment could have been years of flash flooding so that the canals could not be maintained.  Another was that the saline in the water may have eventually sterilized the ground so that crops would no longer grow.  Other considered reasons for their disappearance could have been draught, disease, internal strife or earth quakes. 

The site was discovered in 1694 when the first Spanish missionaries arrived and named it Casa Grande.  Unfortunately, for two centuries after Casa Grande’s discovery, visitors and souvenir hunters pillaged the area.  It took scientists until 1892 to have Casa Grande became the nation’s first archeological reserve.

For more information visit http://www.nps.gov/cagr/historyculture/the-ancient-sonoran-desert-people.htm .

Japanese Internment Camp;

 

Memorial on top the Butte

A layout of the camp

We also went exploring for a WWII Japanese Internment Camp.  We became interested in finding this site when we found it on an Arizona map.  There were no road signs.  We tried finding it by driving on canal roads.  We finally saw a truck coming from the opposite direction and Mike asked if he could point us in the right direction.  We were close but would never have found it without his help.  It’s a shame because kids have been partying in the area and leaving cans and broken glass everywhere.  From the top of a small butte there was a memorial plaque.  It was hard to image people being displaced in a place like this.

Motor Home Living:

 

Now for the motor home living update.  It isn’t always glamorous.  When we left Desert Trails we had a hard time getting our all-electronic jacks to retract.  We kept having to reset the panel because an alarm would sound and indicated that our jacks weren’t all the way down or all the way up.  With the help of our neighbor, Bill, who was more persistent than we were, we finally got them up through constantly resetting the panel.  However, when we got to Casa Grande, we had no success with lowering or raising the jacks. 

We called Good Sam to the rescue and they sent Whitfield Auto out to look at our situation.  According to the repair person, the cotter pin holding the movable part of the back jack on the driver’s side had snapped.  They duct-taped it up “literally” so that we could take it down to their shop about 1 mile away.  They were able to fix that one jack in one day (which required removing both back tires on that side) but were still not able to get the entire jack system working again.  By the end of the day they had determined that one of the front jack’s motors had burned out.  Okay, now what?  They told us we could take the motor home back to our spot at Casa Grande where they could fix it at the site. 

About a week ago, they called us when the new engine had arrived and that they would repair the jack on Wednesday (yesterday) or Thursday (today).  I called yesterday morning and they told me that they could possibly do it Wednesday afternoon.  No show on Wednesday.  This morning, I called again.  It turns out the person they had working on our repair was in the hospital because he had been experiencing shortness of breath, etc.  So our new expected repair date is tomorrow.  I’m crossing my fingers on this one.  Thank goodness a three-year warranty was included in the price of our motor home!  I’m also glad that, unlike some other motor homes, we can put our slides out without the jack levelers down.

Well that’s all the news we have for now!

 

 

Happy 2015!

Our time is coming to an end a Desert Trails RV park. We’ve really enjoyed our time here with all the activities and making new friends.  It’s heartwarming to have folks tell us that they’ll miss us when we’re gone. 

One of our neighbors, Bill, even said that he was going to miss “the two of us”.  You see, Bear and his dog, Sprocket, had a good relationship going. Sprocket looks like a small version of Bear and they both have a lot of energy.  So, Bill, Marty and Sprocket would invite Bear to go play in the dog run area.  It turns out that Bear loves to retrieve balls (we already knew this) and Sprocket likes to chase Bear.  So when Marty said he was going to miss “the two of us”, I asked him “what about Bear?”  It seems that Marty had a “talk” with Bear and Bear told him he wanted to stay with Sprocket.  What a character, but this is pretty typical of full-time RVers.  The majority of RVers are laid back and generally pretty happy folks!

A look out the windshield

Don’t let anyone ever tell you that it never rains in the Arizona desert.  It started raining early this morning and hasn’t stopped.  This isn’t the typical spring rains where there can be serious flooding.  Instead it’s a light but steady downpour.  It pretty much limits the day to indoor activities.

This past Monday we traveled to visit Tombstone with our friends from Bend, Momi and Bob.  the Courthouse is pretty cool.  It was build in 1882.  http://www.tombstonecourthouse.com/tombstone-history. We also saw the enactment of the fight at the OK corral.  It was a little more realistic history-wise than was Old Tucson.


Tombstone Courthouse

Shoot-out at the OK Corral



Crystal Palace Saloon



Stage Coach



Katherine with Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp



Momi and Katherine at Tucson












We’ve been learning a lot about cacti.  Especially those pertaining to pets as we walk through Desert Trails.  The most predatory of the cacti, as seen personally through poor
Bear, is the “Jumping Cholla”.  As quoted from a website (http://archive.bio.ed.ac.uk/jdeacon/desertecology/cholla.htm):

“In fact, the fruits and stem segments of this plant often are dislodged by passing animals of humans - so easily that the other common name for this plant is the ‘jumping cholla’. The fruits are usually sterile, and the plant reproduces when joints fall to the ground and take root.” 

This past Monday night, we took Bear for his last walk of the day after dark.  As always, we took a flashlight in case we encounter rattle snakes or other aggressive creatures.  Somehow, Bear’s paw encountered not just one but two of the “joints” from a Cholla plant.  Not realizing it until it was too late, Bear had tried, in the dark, to dislodge one of the joints from his foot with his mouth and consequently getting it stuck in the roof of his mount and tongue.  My greatest concern was that he would try to swallow it.  He was in pain and panic, so when I tried to dislodge the "joint", he locked his jaw closed.  It took several minutes to convince Bear to open his mouth.  I was finally able to dislodge the offending plant enough to get him home for further inspection.  I was truly grateful to find that he wasn’t experiencing any other mouth pain.  He did have another “joint” in his foot that was fairly easily dislodged.  I had a bit of a time removing the burrs from my fingers, but was again grateful that things didn’t end differently.  Lesson learned:  there are more than snakes to be aware of while residing in the desert!

We will be off to Casa Grande RV Park on Tuesday.  This is about 1.5 hours northeast from Desert Trails and is closer to Phoenix rather than Tucson.  We have been feeling the urge to move on even though we’ve had such a great time here.  We’ll always have fond memories but are ready to make more!

So, off we go!!

Katherine and Mike