Casa Grande, Arizona – Week 1

We have been here in Casa Grande for a little over a week.  For the most part the weather has been pleasant with clear skies, not much wind and warm enough to keep water aerobics from being cancelled.  This is our second visit to Desert Shadows; we spent last Thanksgiving here as well and enjoyed the visit enough to plan an encore this year.

Our friends, Galen and Betty Jo, are here as well and last Friday we made a day trip to Florence.  They hadn’t toured the Pinal County Historical Museum so we made that our first stop.  This little museum has become one of our favorite places to visit, thanks to the historian/docent who has an endless supply of stories about the wonderful array of characters who’ve passed through Florence over the decades.  Every city has an industry for which it is noted – Florence’s claim to fame is Incarceration.  It’s home to two state penitentiaries, several privately-owned prisons and a number of specialized facilities, including one for juvenile offenders.  The first prison was built to relieve crowding at the territorial prison in Yuma and so the museum features many artifacts from those days, including the gallows trap door and a two-seater chair for the gas chamber which eventually replaced the hanging tree. 

Florence was once a well-heeled mining town and the museum has fine examples of some of the more upscale accoutrements of a by-gone era.  The Western movie hero, Tom Mix,  was killed in a car accident not far from Florence so one exhibit features photos and mementos of his presence in Florence which he visited on a regular basis.  Gene Autry was another movie cowboy to spend time in the area visiting friends who owned ranches nearby.

After a thorough examination of the museum’s displays, we walked around the historic downtown.  The visitors center was in the process of vacating the two-story brick building known as the Conrad Brunenkant City Bakery (built in 1889) and moving to the first Pinal County Courthouse; it’s also known as McFarland State Historic Park but was closed shortly after being renovated due to state budget shortages.  It’s great that the city will be able to make use of this wonderful old building, which dates from the late 1870s.

Another interesting structure on the walking tour is the Silver King Hotel, once the social center of the city and considered the height of elegance at the time.  It now houses a restaurant and several small shops, including one that sells what must be the most expensive fudge in the state. 

One of our favorite stories has to do with the second Pinal County Courthouse, built in 1891 and now undergoing renovations.  It looks pretty much like every other government building of that era but what makes it special is its clock tower.  The county went over budget in constructing the courthouse and didn’t have funds left for the internal workings of a clock.  So the hands were painted on and it is forever 11:44 in Florence, no matter what time you get there.

Thanksgiving dinner turned out to be a disappointment.  We recalled having a delicious ample dinner last year at a pretty modest price.  This year the meal was mediocre at best, cost $2 more than last year and seconds were not allowed.  Each family was asked to bring a salad or dessert, most of which went uneaten.  Rumor has it that turkey sandwiches will be served on Black Friday for $4 per person….using turkey we’ve already paid for.  We won’t be participating and we’ll likely find somewhere else to spend next Thanksgiving.  Meanwhile, we have a lot of confetti salad left over.

We have a little less than a week left in Casa Grande before moving up to Apache Junction to hibernate for the winter.  There are a couple of other attractions  we’d like to visit before leaving but it remains to be seen if we can get organized enough to accomplish much.

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Tucson, Arizona

As we wind down for the winter hibernation, our touring dwindles to a much slower pace so by the time we arrived in Tucson we were all but marching in place.  This was our third visit to Tucson so we’d already seen the major attractions.  Given our faulty memories, we could have revisited them and been impressed all over again!  But we didn’t.  Our campground, Rincon Country West, had so many activities that we stuck pretty close to home for the entire week we were in Tucson.  Everyone we met was extremely friendly and welcoming.

On Veterans Day the resort had a “tea dance” from 4:00 to 6:oo and we took advantage of the nice big dance floor.  It doesn’t take more than a song or two to show us how out of shape we are.  Our tablemates, who spend their summers at 7000 feet in Colorado, had a good laugh over us trying to blame our breathlessness on the altitude in Tucson.  They weren’t buying it.

Intrigued by the idea of a “beading group”, I ventured to attend a session on Monday morning in the pottery room.  A delightful group of ladies were working on various projects and it soon became evident that their emphasis is actually on making beads, not just stringing or weaving them.  Which explains why they meet in the pottery room.  I’m so jealous that they all will be attending the big bead and gem show in February.

Our lone attempt at touring was to revisit Mission San Xavier del Bac,  known as The White Dove of the Desert.   The mission was established in 1692 by Father Kino and the structure completed in 1783.  As you might imagine, it has undergone many restorations over the centuries and is still being worked on as funds become available.   On our first visit in 2005, the building was partially obscured by scaffolding on one bell tower.  The results of that work are obvious in the photo.

The mission is on land which is part of the Tohono O’odham reservation.  Originally known as Papagos, the tribe is thought to be related to the Pimas, both descendants of the ancient Hohokam peoples who inhabited the Sonoran Desert for centuries. 

And now it’s on to Casa Grande for two weeks before heading to Apache Junction for the winter months.  We are looking forward to seeing many old friends in The Valley of the Sun.

Camp Verde, Arizona

We beat a hasty retreat from Bullhead City on Thursday, hoping to make the long steep climb to Kingman before the day became too warm. We needn’t have worried – it just never got very hot. By the time we got to Flagstaff we began to see snow on the mountain peaks and plenty of autumn color on the trees.

Although we’ve made many visits to Camp Verde, we had never taken the Verde Canyon Railroad into the otherwise inaccessible Verde River Canyon. This time we decided to loosen our grip on the budget and take the trip to enjoy the fall colors. The trip begins in Clarkdale, where we were once again introduced to Senator William A. Clark, the Butte copper baron we first “met” in Beatty, NV. And, yes, Clarkdale was named for him. He purchased the copper mine part-way up the mountain in Jerome and established the railroad to transport the ore north to meet the Santa Fe Railroad 38 miles away at Drake.

The weather was absolutely perfect for the trip and we spent the entire four-hour excursion in an open car rather than in the Pullman car. The tracks follow the Verde River, very calm and placid at the moment, but capable of turning into a torrent given enough snow melt near Flagstaff or summer monsoons upstream. We could see the damage done to trees by a recent flash flood.

For those who have done leaf-peeping in New England, the foliage colors in Arizona would be a disappointment, tending mostly to the golds of cottonwoods and sycamores, along with some amber and browns of smaller trees and bushes. But none of the oranges and reds you’d see with hardwoods.

Wildlife was in short supply except for a redtail hawk and what might have been a golden eagle. We did see a bald eagle nest on the red cliffs but it’s not quite the season for them to be nesting and last season’s fledges would already have flown the coop. The train was held up twice along the way by cows wandering along the tracks. Visible from the tracks is a cliff dwelling, once home to a pre-Colombian people now called Sinaqua by anthropologists. They lived in the area around 1100 A.D. It isn’t known what they called themselves so modern scientists have dubbed them Sin (without) Agua (water). The blackened ceiling of the cave can be seen from the train.

As we passed along the (mostly) red cliffs, the guides pointed out a number of rock formations which have acquired names. I suspect they were named by various guides over the years to keep the passengers amused. Not only do you need a very active imagination to “see” some of these forms but additional assistance might be required – say a few hours too long in the hot sun without a hat, some recreational drugs or a sharp rap to the temple with a blunt object. The named rocks are pictured here in their very own album.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we met fellow Fulltimers, Pat and Ed, for lunch inhistoric Old Town Cottonwood, preceded by the ladies checking out two local craft fairs. We’re hoping to see Pat and Ed again at a rally in December somewhere in the Phoenix area.

A mad dash to Sedona capped off our short stay in Camp Verde. Being Monday, of course we had to drop by a Beall’s Outlet for a senior discount on our purchases. We didn’t “find a dot, save a lot” but I did get two pairs of casual knit pants. The Goodwill is in the same plaza so we stopped in for a snoop through the book section. And then a bit further down the road we stopped in at a fabulous bead shop called The Bead Garden where I found the daisy spacers I needed and a bunch of other stuff that couldn’t be resisted. The bead stash has reached epic portions.

Next week’s report will be from Tucson where we hope it will be somewhat warmer and a little less windy.

Bullhead City, Arizona

We arrived here in Bullhead City last Thursday after a short but boring drive down from Pahrump. The weather has been very nice, warm and sunny but with a more or less constant breeze to keep things from being unpleasant. Our initial assumption was that Bullhead City was named for the bottom-feeder of the same name, given the city’s location on the banks of the Colorado River. Not so, we’ve since learned. The town was named for a large rock (or a small island) just north of Davis Dam, now submerged in what became Lake Mohave. Right across the river is the town of Laughlin, Nevada, home to a number of casinos and the famous Don Laughlin collection of classic cars.

It seems that Bullhead City, at least, caters to an older crowd with plenty of 55+ gated communities, senior citizen discounts, and doctors practicing geriatric medicine. And just about every franchise known to mankind.

From our campground, we have a lovely view of the bright lights of Laughlin. And, like Pahrump, the sunsets here can be nothing short of spectacular. And here’s the proof.

One of the “things to do” from this location is to pay a visit to Oatman, a gold mining town turned tourist trap. We toured it on our first visit and won’t be returning this time. It sits on a portion of old Route 66 which has all but disappeared. The town is home to a herd of burros who wander about, stopping traffic and mooching treats from shop owners and tourists alike. Before you even get out of your car, they know who’s packing carrots and who isn’t!

Another of the “must do” side trips from Bullhead City is a visit to Hoover Dam and the recently opened Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge across the Colorado River. I’m not fond of bridges or dams so I opted to stay at home with the new vacuum cleaner and practice housework. With trusty camera in hand, Howie drove off to explore both structural wonders at his leisure. The bridge is open to foot traffic so naturally he had to hoof it across; but he did admit to feeling a bit queazy when peering down into the current of the river far below.

One of the more interesting facts about the bridge is that construction was commenced on both shorelines simultaneously and the workers met in the middle where the two halves were within 3/8ths of an inch of each other, considerably better than the tolerance built into the plan.

As for Hoover Dam (formerly Boulder Dam), the statistics are mind-boggling, especially when you realize a government project was actually completed two years ahead of schedule and significantly under budget. And the sale of electricity has paid for the dam, with interest, and continues to pay for its maintenance. Lake Mead, the reservoir which forms behind Hoover Dam, is America’s largest man-made lake with 550 miles of shoreline and containing (shudder) 9. 2 trillion gallons of water.

If you are sufficiently interested in learning more about the bridge, you can check the Article that appeared in the October 17th issue of Parade Magazine. A link in that article leads to a Slideshow that tracks the bridge’s construction. (11/14/10 - just found another slideshow with some eye-popping photos)

Stay turned for next week’s report from another location here in Arizona. And let’s keep our fingers crossed that Flagstaff isn’t enjoying winter weather just yet.

Pahrump, Nevada – Week Two

We are parked at Charleston Peak RV Resort with a wonderful view of…you guessed it….Charleston Peak.  Unfortunately the clouds have rarely lifted enough for us to see it and when they do lift we can see that the peak is covered with snow.  It looks nice from a distance.

In spite of being in the desert at the tail end of the warm season, it has been chilly for most of our stay and we’ve been treated to some fairly colorful thunderstorms and hard-driving rain.  The weather has served to keep us indoors much of the time and is depriving me of an opportunity to enjoy water aerobics in the resort’s nice pool.

So, except for exploring a bit more of Pahrump, our only foray into the desert was a day trip to the living ghost town of Beatty with our friends, the Parrs.  Beatty, population roughly 1500,  bills itself as The Gateway to Death Valley and given its desert location is quite verdant, thanks to an underground river called the Amargosa.  Beatty was originally a supply center for mining operations in the area and there are still gold mining operations nearby, along with a volcanic cinder mine and a “medical-grade” mud mine.  I wish we’d check out that little factoid a little more closely.  How does mud get to be medical-grade? 

We checked out the Beatty Museum, a collection of photos and other artifacts from “the good old days”.  By reading an old newspaper story we learned that at one point in time, every building in Beatty would set off a Geiger counter.  You see, Beatty is just “over the hill” from Yucca Mountain…and Area 51.  And then there’s the suspenseful saga of the railroad wars between Clark, the copper king, and Smith, the borax king.  Read about the Kings' feud here.

Beatty is also home to Death Valley Nut & Candy Company, a large shop featuring just about any kind of candy you can think of, except the pink mints Betty Jo was hoping to find.  And a glance through a list of town businesses found The Shady Lady Ranch (brothel) right there between Bank of America (banking) and Stagecoach Hotel & Casino (casinos). 

It’s only a few miles from the ghost town of Rhyolite so off we went off to check that out.  On the way, we saw a trio of wild burros grazing not far from the road.  They abound in this area, their ancestors having been abandoned by the miners who brought them here.  We’d all been to Rhyolite in previous years and somehow managed to miss the Goldwell Open Air Museum, although how anyone could miss a large pink naked lady in the middle of nowhere is anybody’s guess.  In addition to its rather spooky location, this open air (and therefore free) museum boasts several spooky sculptures.  Apparently there is a museum attendant who shows up on weekends to explain the art work.  We were sorry to have missed him/her because most of the artwork needed a whole lot of explaining.   Overcast skies did nothing to improve the ghostliness of these statues.

We had  planned a day trip to Las Vegas but that didn’t quite pan out so we explored a bit more of Pahrump.  It is quite apparent that no “city planner” was involved here.  The valley is enormous and there are bits and pieces of civilization scattered everywhere.  If there is a “downtown” we haven’t found it yet but there are strip malls miles away from each other, not clustered along the state highway as you might expect.  Pahrump was obviously all set for a boom that never quite happened and many of the shops are standing empty along streets that have yet to be paved. 

Pahrump will be home for another few days and if the weather improves we may yet get in a visit to Badwater in Death Valley, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 282 feet below sea level. 

Pahrump, Nevada

Thanks to a leaking valve on the toilet and a lack of t.v. reception in parts of central Nevada, we decided to postpone our departure from Carson City by two days and just make one over-night stop on our way to Pahrump.

We were once again fortunate to find a competent and professional mobile RV tech who promptly repaired the toilet leak and made an adjustment that allowed us to once again use the electric mode on the water heater.  For a number of days we’d been relying on each other to remember to turn the propane-fired heater on.  Neither of us are any too reliable in that regard but at least we weren’t treated to any cold showers. 

Given the extra time in Carson City, we decided to go up and over the mountains for a peek at Lake Tahoe.  The day was bright and clear and we got an early enough start so that we were able to go south to South Lake Tahoe and then north to Incline Village.  There wasn’t much traffic and both towns were fairly empty; tourist towns during “off season” have a ghost-town-in-training aspect about them! 

Looking northward we could see a column of smoke arising from the opposite shoreline.  We never did find out what the story was, a forest fire or a controlled burn, but it was very definitely not far from Incline Village.  There were several areas along the way which had experienced fires fairly recently.  New growth hadn’t started to make headway and charred stumps were still in evidence.  We also noticed a number of dried out trees which we assume is the handiwork of the beetles which are devastating so many of our forests.

From this photo you can see the twisting and turning that U.S. 50 does to get down the mountain-side and into Carson City.  We  noticed that the run-away truck ramp appeared to head straight for the roof of Costco and the RV park right beyond.  I’m glad I didn’t know that as we were having “lunch at Costco” on Saturday!

We departed Carson City on Wednesday and stopped for the night in Hawthorne, a desert town which is home to Hawthorne Army Depot not far from the southern tip of Walker Lake.  The lake might as well be a mirage because your eyes won’t quite believe this enormous puddle of bright blue in the middle of brown nothingness.  The mirage is enhanced by a total lack of any signs of life along the shoreline…no cabins, no piers, no boats.  Two campers seemed to be making use of the lakeside cabanas and that was about the extent.  Memory is faulty but perhaps that’s where we saw the land-locked cabin cruiser decked out as a diner and signs announcing lobster crossings.

Between the tiny towns of Mina and Coaldale (which can only be described as living ghost towns) lies the Columbus Salt Marsh.  As you can see from this photo, the white line of the marsh mimics the snow on the nearby mountains.  One of those mountains may or may not be Boundary Peak, the highest point in Nevada at 13,140 feet.   This was my first attempt to take photos while hanging out the window as we bumped on down the highway at 65 mph.

The run from Hawthorne to Pahrump is really long and really dull with Tonopah being the only town of any size along the way so it was with a huge sigh of relief that we arrived at Charleston Peak in Pahrump.  Charleston Peak is also the name of one of Nevada’s three wineries and shares location with the RV park.   The other two wineries are in the vicinity of Reno.  We believe Charleston Peak has finally been able to bottle some wines from estate-grown grapes.  They got off to a bad start when wild burros ate the first planting of vines and grapes had to be brought in from California to continue production.

Temperatures have been in the 90’s and we’re looking forward to the cool front that’s supposed to move in this week.  We’ve met up once again with our RVing friends, the Parrs, and have several adventures planned while we’re here.  Stayed tuned.

Carson City, Nevada

We found it somewhat difficult to leave Winnemucca, not because we were enamored of the city but because one snafu after another conspired to keep us from making much headway. To begin with, it is never pleasant having to travel on a rainy day. We had planned to stop for fuel at the Flying J on the west side of Winnemucca but after squirming our way to the RV pump it was discovered that they were out of diesel, not just in the RV lane but in the truck lanes as well. There was nothing we could do about the situation so we headed further west, stopping at a Love’s in West Winnemucca. We didn’t even know that a West Winnemucca existed! It wasn’t the least bit amusing that the Flying J tanker was sitting in the Love’s parking lot.

The RV pump was a bit cramped for us with a sharp left turn to exit after filling up. We had our fingers crossed that the parking area directly in front of us would remain empty but that was not to be. It quickly filled with a variety of pick-ups, cars and motorcycles the occupants of which seemed to be wearing uniforms of one sort or another. Several police cars and a hearse soon materialized along the ramp to the highway, further impeding our departure. But we were able to tag along behind a broad-shouldered semi returning to the Interstate and got by the bottleneck with no trouble. We later learned that the procession that was forming was sponsored by the Missing in America Project and included several Veterans’ organizations. The unclaimed remains of seven veterans were being transported from Winnemucca to the National Cemetery in Fernley. There were a number bikers togged out in Harley-Davidson duds and we assume they were planning to make the 200 mile trip in the rain. Now that’s dedication.

The next slow-down occurred when we exited at a rest area only to discover that it was closed and the access road barred, leaving us with nowhere to make a U-turn. Backing up while towing a car is not an option but Howie was able to execute a very tight turn with minimal backing up, just a foot or so, enough to clear the post that was blocking our way. Whew! We made it and were soon back on the highway, heading west into what appeared like more bad weather.

Heavy rain in the desert doesn’t do what you expect it to do. The earth acts so surprised with the extra moisture that it doesn’t respond, rather it just lets the water sit there on the surface making impromptu lakes here and there.

On our first full day in Carson City we dropped in at the Visitors Center to get a feeling for what to see and do in the area. The Nevada State Museum is now closed on Mondays and Tuesdays as a cost-cutting measure so we just wandered around town a bit. It continued to rain and so being outdoors wasn’t much fun anyhow. On Wednesday we were able to visit the museum, part of which was formerly a U.S. Mint. One of the old presses is still functional and once a month they make coins. I believe they fire it up on the 4th Friday of the month.

According to the website, tours of the capitol have to be scheduled two weeks in advance. Hoping that we could attach ourselves to another tour as we did in Boise, I placed a call to the Museum office which schedules such tours. A delightful guide, Claudia, volunteered to lead us around and, as we expected, we learned far more than we’d ever have discovered on a self-guided tour. You’ll have to take the tour yourselves to find out the amusing little story behind this state seal, which is totally made up of small glass seed beads.

The first thing you see upon entering the front doors of the building is a statue of Sarah Winnamucca, a duplicate of the one originally commissioned for Statuary Hall in Washington, DC. Sarah, the daughter of Chief Winnamucca, was an early activist and is thought to be the first Native American to publish a book. She was a gifted speaker and wildly popular “back East” but less popular with her own people, the Northern Paiutes.

The exterior of the capitol is made from sandstone mined by prisoners at a quarry on prison property just east of town. The dome is not plated with silver as one might suspect but is made of aluminum-coated fiberglass. You can barely see it in the attached photo, thanks to an aluminum-colored sky on the day of our visit.

The Capitol Complex also features the State Archives, the Supreme Court Building and the Legislature Building along with some open spaces. This statue of Kit Carson dominates the park-like area between the capitol and the Legislature. Carson City was named for the Carson River which in turn was named in honor of Kit Carson by his boss, John Fremont. Across the street from the capitol, in front of another government building is a water fountain donated by a humane organization and designed to be used by horses. The smaller water “bowls” aroundd the base are intended for use by thirsty dogs. The purple ribbons, here and elsewhere around the Complex, are to publicize Domestic Abuse Awareness Month.

We finished up our tour of the area with a stroll around “downtown”. A handsome wrought-iron fence keeps folks from tumbling into the street but it was sad to see so many of the storefronts empty. Victorian architecture stands side-by-side with more modern looking casinos. The casinos didn’t look any too busy, either.

With the rains finally gone, we took a drive up into them thar hills to the “ghost” town of Virginia City. Most of the “ghosts” were toting shopping bags and waving charge cards, arriving by the tour bus load. We’ve visited many such old mining towns but Virginia City is by far the largest and most active. We purchased tickets on the Virginia and Truckee Railroad and enjoyed the two-mile ride to Gold Hill and back. Unfortunately the noisy engine prevented us from hearing the conductor’s comments about the mines we were passing. We were able to gather that the silver and gold mined here in Nevada built San Francisco and then re-built it after the fire. There are those who might think this a waste of precious metal.

A trolley ride around town was part of our “tour”. We were able to hear the driver this time and enjoyed his stories about the heyday of the town when it was home to 30,000 people. Now it’s home to about 700 hardy souls, including those who still work in the one remaining mine. There are several lovely examples of Victorian architecture, proof of the treasure extracted from the hills. And then there was this pair of homes, known as The Spite Houses. They are only inches apart. One was moved from another location by a very spiteful rival so that the occupant of the first house would never see daylight or enjoy a cool breeze. Now they lean together like a couple of old drunks trying to keep each other from falling down.