Back in Casa Grande, AZ

We are now in Casa Grande, AZ at the Palm Creek RV and Golf Resort. We stayed here for a month this past spring and enjoyed it so much, we made a point to come back again. It's a very nice RV park with lots of ammenities including two swimming pools, billiard room, exercise room, computer lab, sewing room, silversmithing shop, etc.

But our favorite ammenity is the 18 hole "executive" golf course. An executive golf course is one that has all par 3 holes, or mostly par 3 and a few par 4s. No par 5s like a regular course would have. So this course is easy enough to be fun, but still has a few more difficult holes to make it challenging. And the best part is it's very inexpensive for residents of the RV park.

We arrived here on Monday afternoon and Tom was out on the course Tuesday morning at 7:30 am!

We will be here until Thanksgiving so we should have lots of chances to work on our golf games.

A Visit with Aubrey

On Friday we drove an hour north to Flagstaff where my niece, Aubrey, goes to college. Aubrey is a music/voice major and is part of the elite jazz choir at the school. They had a concert on Friday night. It was the first time I've actually been able to watch her perform. What a treat. Before the concert, we had dinner with Aubrey and her boyfriend, Ben. It was so wonderful to spend time with Aubrey and get to know Ben better. I wish we'd had more time together.

Jerome

We took a day last week to visit the town of Jerome. In it's heyday as a major copper mining area, Jerome was once the 4th largest city in Arizona and was sometimes known as the wickedest city in Arizona. After the copper mine shut down in 1953, it almost became a complete ghost town, but is now a small community just outside of Cottonwood. Most of the buildings are the original ones built back in the late 1800s. The town is built on the side of Cleopatra Hill which has about a thirty percent incline, making for steep streets and precariously perched buildings. But it also makes for beautiful views of the valley below.

Montezuma's Castle

Today we visited Montezuma's Castle (a national monument) which, like Scotty's Castle in Death Valley, is not a castle and was never lived in by the person it was named for. The early modern day settlers who first saw it mistakenly assumed it was an Aztec structure which is how it came to carry Montezuma's name. Somehow the name stuck.

Montezuma's Castle was built by the Sinagua people in the early 1100's in the Verde Valley. They started with natural caves found high up on a sheer rock wall near some fertile land along a creek and then built walls to close off the face and form individual rooms. It is five stories and has 20 rooms and they say it is still about 90% intact. It was reached by a series of ladders which could be pulled up if there was a threat.

The Sinagua lived in the area for about 300 years but sometime in the 1400's they just seemed to disappear and no one knows if they died out or moved on.

Sedona Scenery

Yesterday we took the short drive up to Sedona. I'd really been looking forward to spending a bit of time exploring their "downtown" area which is supposed to have a lot of unigue art galleries, shops and restaurants. But when we got there, the entire area is in complete chaos due to some major road construction going on. So we decided not to try to stop but just drove on through and got out of the way as quickly as possible. Still, it was not a wasted trip. The scenery in and around Sedona is beautiful. Everywhere you look there is an interesting rock formation or canyon or something unigue to look at.

Williams, Arizona

We stopped in Williams, Arizona on our way down to Camp Verde, Arizona with the idea that we would go up to see the Grand Canyon today. It's about an hour north of here. But somehow when we woke up this morning, neither of us could muster up any enthusiasm to make the trip. So it seems we'll just have a lazy day at home before we continue on to Camp Verde tomorrow. Maybe later today we'll have enough energy to do a little exploring around the historic downtown of Williams which was a center for the railroad, ranching and lumber industries in the late 1800's. It was also one of the towns along the historic Route 66.

Lake Havasu

Yesterday we took an hour drive south to Lake Havasu to see "The London Bridge". It was originally built in 1831 over the Thames River in London, England. It was bought by Lake Havasu City in the early 1960's when it was going to be torn down in London. Each brick was dismantled, cleaned and numbered, then shipped to Lake Havasu, Arizona and rebuilt on a man made canal off of the side of Lake Havasu. It is guite amazing what a community will do to attract tourism! Hey, it got us there didn't it? It was a fun day and we even took the dogs and had a picnic in the park beside the lake.

Tomorrow we will leave Bullhead City and drive about 150 miles East to Williams, AZ which is close to the Grand Canyon.


The London Bridge















Lake Havasu

Bullhead City, Arizona

From the dog show we drove about an hour and a half south to Bullhead City, Arizona. Bullhead City is just on the Arizona side of the Colorado River at the southern tip of Nevada. We're staying at another of the parks in our campground membership network. So another park where we only have to pay $1.00 a day. We're feeling pretty good about our decion to buy into the park membership networks. The RV park is only about one half mile away from the river and thus the state line and our site gives a great view of Lauglin, NV. Here's a day and night view.

Dog show in Boulder City

We had another show this past weekend in Boulder City, NV, just outside of Las Vegas. We showed Gracie in the classes (for dogs who are not yet champions) and Dash in Breed (for dogs who are already champions). There was only one other class girl entered. Both girls acted like little bunny rabbits the first day, hopping around the ring instead of a proper trot. The judge was good natured about it. She gave winner's (which is what a dog needs to earn points toward its championship) to Gracie. Hooray! Dash took best of breed but did nothing in the terrier group. On the second day, Gracie behaved a little better and again she took winners. Dash took breed again but it was cold and windy and we were the last group so we decided just to leave early and not show in group.

This weekend gave Gracie two more points so now she has a total of 6. It takes 15 points to become a champion, so she's almost half way there.

Lake Mead and Hoover Dam

During our stay in Las Vegas we decided to do the tourist thing again and visit the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead on the Colorado River. Hoover Dam is about 30 minutes east of Las Vegas as is Boulder City. Boulder City grew because it was the area that all of the workers who built the dam lived in during the time of construction.

We took a tour of the hydroelectric power plant at the dam. This brought Tom back to his power-planting days in the not (at all) distant memory. The plant is a heck of a lot quieter than the oil fired turbine plant that he was in.

We were able to walk across the dam and back from the Nevada side to the Arizona side. To see the dam up close and personal was a truly awsome sight and made you think of the major undertaking that the men of our country performed. It is an absolutely amazing feat of engineering.

The waters of Lake Mead flow into the intake towers and then cascade down to the water turbines of the power plant which turn the generators and then exit to the other side of the dam to the Colorado River. There are two banks of hydroelectric generators, one bank per side of the river.

Death Valley and Scotty's Castle

Before leaving Pahrump, we took a drive west back into California and Death Valley National Park. The terrain is vast, varied and forbidding, but strangely beautiful too. This picture is from an overlook near the south east edge of the valley, still at the upper elevations, around 3000 feet. You can see the valley floor, which drops down to about 200 feet below sea level, in the distance behind Tom.

From here we drove down into and through the middle of the valley to the north end, a drive of close to 60 miles.

At the north end of the valley sits "Scotty's Castle" which is not really a castle and was never lived in by Scotty. "Death Valley Scotty" was a rather colorful character. He claimed to have found a gold mine in Death Valley and convinced several rich businessmen to invest in it, all the while living large off their money and never actually doing any mining. Most investors just dropped out after not seeing any profits, but one, Albert Johnson from Chicago, made a trip out to Death Valley demanding Scotty show him the gold mine. Instead of exposing Scotty for the fraud he was, Johnson fell in love with the area and somehow he and Scotty became fast friends. Johnson and his wife built the mansion in the 1930's as a vacation home and Scotty began telling everyone he was building it with the profits from his gold mine, a claim Johnson never disputed publicly. So, the house became known as Scotty's Castle. We were able to tour the house which still contains all the original furnishings.

There is a picnic area on the grounds with a sign saying "Don't Feed the Coyotes". Which we thought was rather odd until we saw a coyote resting in the shade of a tree on the lawn.