Monday December,12,2011

Heavy, heavy overcast skies above us, and as we hurried down the road, the mountains began playing Peek-A-Boo with us  through the veils of rain close to their faces.  The rain was still far enough away that we weren’t getting wet yet.    We have seen many plains, but there are no deer or antelope playing.  Where is that range where they play?  So far we must not have found it.  

As we drive along, I vaguely remember either reading or learning in a history class, that before the War of Northern Aggression, the U.S. government imported camels to be used in crossing the deserts of the southwest.  It was soon discovered that we also needed to import people who knew how to ride, train and tend camels cause we had no idea how to take care of them.  Whether there are remnants now, I do not know, but I think it’s a really neat piece of history.    Those camels wouldn’t need as much water as horses and mules and it was a practical idea, in theory.  Today the rains came.  Perhaps the dry river beds will hold some water tomorrow.

We did see the first sign saying, “Canyon” today.  Each was quite deep and at the bottom there are winding, dry river beds.  The topography is completely different again today.  There is a cactus that blooms with a white flower and reminds us of the sourwood we see along the roads in N.C.  I wish I could find someone who could tell me the different names of the various cacti we see and about their life cycles.  I guess I should do some research on the internet, but I probably won’t.

 The storm is coming from the northwest and an hour into the storm, some of the river beds are beginning to have a slick glaze on them giving the impression that the ground is more clay than soil.  Yesterday, and the day before, we saw lots of pecan groves.  Today there are cotton fields after cotton fields and huge bales waiting to be carried to the gins.

The brown sign says, “Casa Grande Ruins, a National Register site” and we veer to the right to follow the road.   We travel about 20 miles through more cotton fields and see our first Saguaro (sp?) cacti.  They essentially have one huge trunk and various numbers of arms…I suppose they’re branches.  The ruins are in the town of Coolidge, not the town of Casa Grande (Sorta like Beaufort isn’t in Beaufort County, I guess.)  Anyway, there was a well done museum of the Hohokam culture of the ancient Sonora Valley people of the Gila River area.  It was a fascinating culture beginning around 300 AD with pit houses.   Basically they dug a square pit in the ground and erected four mesquite poles and stuffed the spaces between the poles with twigs and grasses and covered them with mud that hardened in the baking sun.  The roof was an arc built of the same materials as the sides.  It was a sleeping room and all other activity occurred outside.   Later they built taller rectangular areas above ground with thicker walls and another opening other than the door.  What we saw was a four story house made of caliche, a calcium carbonate material that they found about three feet under the soil.  They knew it was there, because they had come into contact with it as they hand dug canals from the Gila river for over 16 miles and about 20 feet wide.  Each of these canals also had smaller canals running off the larger ones so that they could be used for irrigations of the three sister crops they grew.  Corn surrounded by beans (that would climb the corn), and then squash planted around the beans because the leaves would shelter the beans from the sweltering sun.  I would never have thought to do that on my own. 

We left there and headed toward Phoenix and our destination for this evening.  Apache Junction, just to the east of Phoenix.  On the outskirts of Phoenix we saw crape myrtle, roses, petunias,  geranium,  and lantana all in bloom, and orange and grapefruit  trees bending under their fruit.  They won’t be ripe until February.  Darn!!!

Years ago Kryn and Kath gave their father a bumper sticker that informed the entire world, “This car stops at all Big Lots”.   We found one today.  What we need now is a bumper sticker that announces, “This car has to stop at all Walmarts in order to survive”!

We made it to the campground and had just gotten inside the camper when just about every cloud we saw today dumped their loads of rain on top of us.  Bet we see water running in the ditches, at least, tomorrow.

Blessing,

Tromping trailer travelers