December 13, 2011

December 13, 2011

Greetings to one and all from the Shady Lady RV Park in Quartzsite, Arizona. 

What a crazy mixed up day this has been.  The weather positively could not decide what to do.  It was off  and on clouds and rain and then there was a very short period of sun as were were leaving Apache Junction.  Phoenix is an interesting area.  Within its borders is Scottsdale, Tempe, and Mesa.  This is probably the cleanest area we’ve been in.  We did find something amazing today.  In Scottsdale there were houses with green grass.  In such a short period of time for us, it seems strange to see growing grass.  While the entire area is lovely, the traffic is very congested with six lanes headed west and no one wanting to be in the lane they are in.  Cutting, weaving, crossing several lanes at one time, seems to be the rule.  We got in the right hand lane and stayed there except when we were warned it was a turn only lane.  When that occurred, we eased to the lane immediately to the left and stayed there.   The sound barrier walls displayed angular designs which I really like.  I prefer angles to circles any day and the slopes of the roads were banked in light pebbles with geometric designs of darker stone imbedded in them.  The entire roadway had a very pleasing effect.      

Outside the city limits we were again surrounded by miles of rimmed barrenness.  I’m sure that is not true, but I have no idea what we are seeing.  The landscape is quite strange to us.  At one point I saw something.  It was either a big feline or a small canine.  I don’t know which.  Dan missed it and I just described it to him as I described it to you.  He was no help in identifying what I’d seen!  Can you imagine that?  And the rain came again.  Several of the mountains we see must be kin to Mount Olympus.  The tops are hidden in the clouds.  So far there has been no thunder or lightening in the mountains as we drive.  The rain is finally beginning  to  collect in places.  As we left Apache Junction, there were large puddles in the road and later we were seeing more puddles.  I was wrong about maybe seeing rivers today.  So far all we saw were patches of connected puddles along the side of the roads.  We noticed something else we had not seen until today.  We were doing 60 in a 75 zone and we could see man made berms across the landscape.  They occurred every time I counted from one one thousandth to five one thousandth.  Now, if you can do the math, you will be able to know how far apart these berms were.   I took Latin in college in place of math.  It was allowed to substitute that way when I was in school.  That’s a good thing or I’d still be there.

After these berms, the land was covered in black rocks among the different cacti.  Whether the rocks were coal (doubtful), obsidian (very doubtful), charred stones (possible), grey stones black from the rain (conceivable) of basalt (probably) I’m not sure, but they stood out against the sandy soil of the desert and the vegetation.

We pulled into the Shady Lady around 2 pm this afternoon.  In the park are bougainvillea, oleander, tamarisk, cottonwood and weeping something or other.  I’m not sure what.

We called Kath to tell her we plan to be at her house on Friday and called Kryn to tell him where we are.  He had a message for me.  Not having heard of the camels in the southwest before, he looked it up and found that there was a Camel Corp set up in the 1850’s and the fellow they hired to be the camel trainer had an unusual name for the Army fellows.  They could not pronounce his name and they Americanized his name by calling him , “Hi Jolly”.  All this information is in Wikipedia and even the fact that the ferial camel descendants were still roaming the deserts in the 1940’s.  It seems there’s a statue of a camel and “HI Jolly” here and we’re going to see if we can find it tomorrow.  Imagine that.  We just picked this place to stop and Kryn says the Camel trainer is here, too!

This is a most unique place.  From what we’ve been able to tell so far, it’s one RV park after the other.  We plan to stay here tomorrow and hope we have sun so we can do some sleuthing.  There are roadside sales, antique sales, flea markets, outlet stores, etc. everywhere.   Let’s see what we can find.

Type at ya later!

Blessings,

Travel Treasures Trustees