Mesa, Arizona - Feb. & Mar. 2010

January 30, 2010 - April 3, 2010

We have been enjoying a couple of months here in the Phoenix area. We are parked in a small, older mobile home park called Ambassador Downs right on Main Street in Mesa. Our windshield had slipped from its gasket and the authorized repair place turned out to be just down the street. While there Mike saw the way the company, RV Restorations, puts in laminate flooring. Now we have dark wood floors instead of the old carpeting. Mike decided he could do it himself in a way we could live in the rig while the work progressed. Being in a big city offered lots of places to supply materials to get the job done.



Although there is the hustle and bustle of a big metropolis, there are also areas with orange groves, stretches of rocky desert terrain with stately saguaros and other desert vegetation, plus many walking trails along irrigation canals. We experienced the pleasures of both big city and small town places.

BIG CITY PLEASURES

We took the Metro Rail from Mesa into downtown Phoenix to see the state capitol. The building that served as the Arizona Territory Capitol and briefly as State Capitol is now known as the Arizona Capitol Museum. Since the guided tour was mostly museum exhibits, we elected to walk around ourselves. The extensive displays dedicated to the Battleship Arizona were worth the visit. The workings of the state is done in three non-descript buildings surrounding the smaller museum building. We briefly sat in the gallery for the raucous opening of an afternoon session of the legislature. There was a lot of joking around between the members. On the free shuttle bus that took us to and from the metro rail station we sat among people sleeping alongside bags of personal belongings . Evidently the area near the capitol is full of transients looking and waiting for social services. Code Pink and other activists were out protesting the local sheriff for his tough illegal immigration policies.

Eleven major league baseball teams hold their spring training in the Phoenix area. Although we did not go to see a game, a visit to the Arizona Museum for Youth told the history of how these teams, now known as the Cactus League, were lured to Arizona.. Most of the Red Sox, then starring Ted Williams, preferred Florida as it was more familiar to New Englanders and offered more opportunities for fishing. Another player said he couldn’t feel the sweat of the game in the dry climate of Arizona. The exhibit also had a fun video of dogs playing baseball. Phoenix is a sport-fans’ Mecca. Among the many venues for sports, we took a fascinating architectural and technological tour of the University of Phoenix Stadium - home to the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and the Fiesta Bowl. The barrel cactus- shaped concrete building has both a retractable roof and a roll-out grass playing field. No one gets inside the Cardinal’s locker room except team members. Neither of the Super Bowl teams did either.



An evening performance of the Moscow State Radio Symphony Orchestra at the beautiful Mesa Arts Center was a treat. Our seats gave us an overhead view of the agile hands of the pianist as he played Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43. Many winter visitors volunteer here at the Mesa Arts Center and the several museums in town as well as at Hohokum Field where the Cubs play.
Another treat was the dancing at the annual manager’s dinner and show for residents of our RV park. The manager, Valentino, used to be a crooner in the style of Dean Martin and knows many musicians and performers hereabouts.



Mesa, we were told, is the dance capital of the west. A tango and the mambo were performed by couples from the park. A group from the Chinese Cultural Center did several ethnic dances. The movements during the Peacock Dance mimicked the strutting and neck jerking of the peacock but were made more beautiful by the gracefulness of the dancer.



Every so often a parade of people carrying torches and chanting would walk through the park. They turned out to be avid fans of the TV program, Survivor, and were carrying out a ceremony given when a resident portraying one of the show’s participants was voted off.

We found new places to eat. One was a Vietnamese restaurant called Un-pho-gettable located in the Mekong Plaza. It was one of several located around the gigantic central market which featured all kinds of exotic Asian foods and specialty items. Both the market and the cuisine were fun experiences! Our waitress helped us pick what dishes we were willing to try and then assisted us in putting on the appropriate condiments and herbs. Their specialty is Pho or soup, a consomme with selected additions of noodles, vegetables, meat or shrimp.

SMALL TOWN PLACES

A stunning scenic drive through the Superstition Mountains in the Tonto National Forest brought us first to the old historic mining town of Goldfield. This popular tourist place offers mine tours, train and horse carriage rides, with a brothel, blacksmith shop or saloon to see as you walk around town. We asked and got the answer to the frequently asked question, “ How did the mountains get the name Superstition?” We only drove as far as Tortilla Flat, an old stagecoach stop, as the gravel road ahead to Roosevelt Lake was in poor shape. Here old-west roots are played up with wooden sidewalks, a dollar -covered café ceiling and country music for the enjoyment of the many travelers who make their way to this outpost.
Another trip took us to historic Florence. A purse made from license plates caught my eye at the Visitor Center. More such crafts and bakery goods made by inmates were to be found at the Prison Outlet Store. We walked through the True Value Hardware store to see its touted eclectic array of goods for sale. The most unusual item were the pink boxer shorts. Here, sold as a tourist item, pink underwear are actually used by the prison. Supposedly, since the color change, the loss of such items walking out of the prison has sharply dropped and saved the tax payers much money.
On a later trip following the Apache Trail, we drove along arrays of purple, orange and bright pink colored wild flowers. We walked along the Boyce Thompson Arboretum trail that took us through several different desert landscapes, along a lake and creek bed to see some desert plants that we hadn’t seen anywhere else. The strangest was a 25 foot tall Boojum. It was labeled as being of the ocotilla family but the only resemblance to an ocotillo were the thorns. On the way to Superior and Globe huge copper mining operations were evident.

Quartzsite - Jan. 2010

January 13, 2010 - January 29, 2010

We next went to Quartzsite to join up with several RV groups we belong to. Each winter Quartzsite is the gathering place for thousands of RVers who come for the swap meets and the Big Tent RV and Travel Show among others. The rock and gem shows bring rock hounds, artists, and vendors from world-wide. The blue lapis lazuli and other gem stones from Afghanistan caught our eye as well as rabbits, turtles and fish made from stacked polished quartzite.



We first joined up with the Boomers, a self-claimed “casual social group whose members exhibit a youthful mindset”. About 90 plus rigs came and went during the two weeks that this Boom-a-Rang took place. Gretchen, the Rang hostess, did a yeoman’s job welcoming every new arriver and announcing all the activities at each Happy Hour. Several mornings she and her husband made pancakes for everyone. Donations collected for their efforts added to a grand sum donated to CARE, an ESCAPEE club charity. For a casual group, there was a plethora of events and activities scheduled which took place despite some bad weather. One fierce wind and rain storm had people joking about replacing the morning walk with rowing on the new creeks flowing through the campsite. In town saguaros and vendor tents were blown down.

We then moved to join the Boondockers and the Freethinkers who were camped in a more accessible area of free BLM camping surrounding Quartzsite. The Freethinkers held a wine and gourmet soup dinner followed by conversation by the campfire. Randy, a guest, recited a poem about Hi Jolly, one of Quartzsite’s famous residents. Hi Jolly or Haiji Ali came to the U.S. from Syria along with the first shipment of camels that the War Department was hoping would be useful in carrying supplies over the desert. After the camel experiment fizzled, Hi Jolly came to Quartzsite and became a prospector, miner and cattleman. Randy’s poem was a modern version of Hi Jolly’s spirit roaming the desert. Hi Jolly remarks about finding strange humans who live in mechanical homes on the desert floor.

A favorite attraction in the area is the Nellie B. Saloon or the Desert Bar. It is located about 7 dirt-road miles from Highway 95 north of Parker on the remains of an old mining site. Its owner has built a saloon, a small cathedral, stages for bands, and 6 stall restrooms with flush toilets all powered by solar energy. Only opened weekends, it was jammed despite its remote setting surrounded by BLM land. It was on such rides to out-of-the- way places, that one can appreciate the fantastical shaped silhouettes of the surrounding Arizona mountains.

Yuma, Arizona

December 05, 2009 - January 12, 2010

This winter finds us in Arizona. We first returned to Yuma. It is our third time here and so the challenge in revisiting places is to capture excitement in the familiar. Our home park this time is Hidden Cove RV Park located next to the park we were in last year.

Yuma was founded and shaped by its location near the best natural crossing on the Colorado River. Many of the Forty-Niners crossed here via a rope ferry on their way to the California gold fields. It is hard to imagine that the Colorado of today was once navigable from the Gulf of California to the mouth of the Grand Canyon making Yuma once a bustling river town. In 1915 the historic Ocean to Ocean bridge was built. It was the only vehicular bridge crossing the Colorado for 1,200 miles. During the depression years many people used this bridge to seek a better life in California. The Los Angeles police chief sent his officers to try to stop the flow at one point. Many that were stopped decided to settle here. Yuma today is an agricultural town. The Colorado River brings green relief to the mostly yellow and brown desert landscape in the form of miles of agricultural fields, lush date palm groves and remnants of citrus groves. Fields of lettuce lie next to the largest shopping mall; tractors and farm worker buses with attached Andy Gumps add to the city street traffic.

We went to the Yuma Proving Grounds to take in a special NASA exhibit on the Constellation project. The Yuma Proving Grounds still is used to test military equipment for its ability to withstand brutal summer temperatures and difficult desert terrain. The base museum tells the history of the men trained and weaponry tested here for WWII. There is a Big Guns display of all types of cannons The museum curator told us that modern cannons were designed hundreds of years prior to their becoming a reality because the technology of making steel that could withstand the cannon’s heat and power had not yet developed. We were told that some of the military equipment seen in the film AVATAR (supposedly 150 years in the future) is very close to coming to fruition. A new Holocaust section was added since our last visit. The photos and interviews of the men from this base who were the first to enter the prison camps made this section very compelling.