Picacho Peak Hike

Picacho Peak as see from the top of our trailer. Yes, I had to zoom in on it. To the left of the photo is the rest of the Picacho Mountain Range.

For the last day of January 2010, Nolan decided we should hike to the top of Picacho Peak. It's right along I-10 south of Casa Grande and we've passed by it dozens of time. The peak and the land around it is a state park. The mountain has been used as landmark for travelers for centuries.

.....Of course if we were going to hike, we were going to hike to the top of the peak. It rises 1,500' above the surrounding land. What the heck, it's only two miles. Notice I didn't read the rest of the sign.

The trail did indeed start rising immediately. The first goal was to get to the dip in the mountain just ahead. But it wasn't a straight path. We weaved back and forth all the way up the hill. I was pooped by the time we got to the saddle.

This is the first of many cabled areas where we used the cable to help us up the trail.

......I don't know how many breaks we took on the way to the saddle but we enjoyed the view along the way. Since we were in the shadow and the view was in the sun, this photo doesn't show the view.

...So here are a few photos from this stop. Across the way is the rest of the Picacho Mountains. They were all formed by a volcano 22 million years ago. Scientists have never determined where the volcano was located.

...In this photo you can see some of the park roads and I-10.

Once we climbed the first 1,000' we got to the top of the saddle and could look westward.

....The view we didn't like was where the trail went next... down, down, down. If you double-click to enlarge this photo and look to the bottom right of the photo, you can see people lower on the trail.

Once we were down a ways, Nolan took a photo of people climbing up the trail back to the saddle.

After a while, we started climbing again. Some of the climbs were places we pulled ourselves up with a cable then scrambled along a narrow ledge. All we had to do was make it around this corner and we would almost be there. Yeah!

What we actually saw when we got around the corner. Oh man, that's a long way to go yet. If you enlarge this photo, you can see another cable run to the right and someone standing on the top.

...The next cable-assist area was almost vertical. This couple went forward. Looked iffy to me.

....We finally made it to the bottom of that vertical climb. Doesn't that look like fun?

...We got past that climb and almost immediately saw this one. Not quite as bad but still something I wouldn't do without a cable. At least we would be almost to the top once we got to the top of it.

....Oh, no. Not more climbing! Aren't we there yet?

From this point we turned around and we could zoom in on the saddle where we had crossed earlier.
Finally we made it to the top!!!! The next few photos show what we saw from the top. Not the most picturesque view. It only took us two hours to get the two miles to the top.

....I think the white line is a water canal.

...This photo to the south shows the snow on the Santa Catalina Mountains. Looking to the SE we could see four layers of mountains.
...What would you do if you were on a mountain and had cell phone reception? Well I called my parents. I knew my Dad would be interested in our climb ( and probably glad he was sitting in his recliner instead of being with us!).

...The place I dreaded on the way down. I can climb but I hate to go down. You can't see where to put your feet!

Nolan was amazed how some of the saguaro were perched on the edge of the rocks.

....The descent wasn't as difficult as I had imagined but it was interesting.

...This photo really shows where the trail went. Please enlarge this photo and see where the people are at the edge of the mountain. That's the top of one of the cable climb areas. They were waiting for someone to finish their climb.

..Did I say that the vertical climb was the part I dreaded most? Oh but that was wrong. The climb back up to the saddle was the worst! I think we took five breaks on the way up this. But most of the rest of the way was down hill so I let gravity assist me as much as possible. I couldn't run down it because there was lots of loose gravel and the trail wasn't straight. The climb to the peak and back took us four hours just like the sign at the start said. I wished I had read it before we started...or maybe not.

Organ Stop Pizza

January 11th we went with a group of over 100 from the park to Organ Stop Pizza. Now the pizza is ok but the real draw is the organ. It's a 1927 Wurlitzer theater pipe organ that was made to provided the music for silent films. It's the only one still left that is played on a continuous basis in a commercial establishment. It is insured for 4 million dollars but most if its parts are irreplacable.


The main attraction. Now look to the left.. you can just make out the drums on the wall. Above them are some other percussion instruments. Under the U.S. flag are some instruments mounted on the wall. Under those you can look through the windows to see some of the 5,000 pipes that are used to make the wide variety of music the organ can play. Behind the flag are more pipes. To the left are more windows behind which play more pipes. The windows are actually louvers that open and close to control the volume of the sound because the pipes only play one volume. The organist controls it all.

Here's a better view of the instruments to the left of the organ. The organ even controls the grand piano behind the drums. There's a fake duck on a barrel back there and there's a key on the organ that makes it quack. The organ has pull out trays covered with buttons that play special sounds from fog horns to 1920's oogah auto horns.

This is a better photo of the instruments on the right of the organ. There are carnival whistles, a tamborine, bells and way too many other things. The pipes can be played to sound like bag pipes too. Oh, the trumpet section is to the back of the theater above the crowd. And there's more instruments on the ceiling. There's even a bubble machine on the ceiling and the organist played "Under the Sea" from Disney's Little Mermaid and bubbles came out right over a four year old. Needless to say, she was delighted.

Cotton Gin

...On January 7th we went to a cotton gin cooperative and this gentleman told us all about cotton ginning. Now I don't remember 1/100th of the things he said but I'll tell you some of it. He's been farming cotton all his life and still used the 2-head pickers he bought in the 1950's. He said most of the farmers use 4-head pickers now.

When the cotton is harvested out of the field, this is what the seeds look like. Fuzzy. And that's the way his dad used to plant them.

Nowadays the fuzz is removed and the seeds are treated with insecticides and herbicides before they are planted. There are many different varieties of cotton and most of the difference has to do with the length of the fibers produced.

This is one of the spindles in the head of the picker. They are what really take the cotton off the plant.

Now I've had photos of cotton and cotton picking on my blog before. I've always called these bales. Well they aren't bales, they are modules. Each weigh between 17,000 and 19,000 pounds and is covered with a tarp.

The modules are picked up by a covered truck and moved to the gin where they are put in rows like in the above photo. A truck like this then picks them up and takes them to the start of the ginning process.

I think these piles are the second picking and they weren't compressed and put into modules.

At the start of the process, the modules are put on a conveyor belt that feeds them into the gin.

Inside the gin, the cotton is ran through four machines like this. I forget what they are called but they contain a bunch of saw blades. Well not saw blades like you are thinking. The kerfs on these aren't very deep but they grab the cotton and leave the seeds and other debris to fall to the bottom. You can see the cotton coming out in the middle and the seeds falling down below.

After running through the four machines, the cotton is sucked through a tube in the ceiling and put in this machine. It compacts them into 500 lb bales.

The little mechanical truck on the bottom right moves along a track to the bottom of the machine. When the bales are ready, the machine that is painted yellow bands the bales then the mechanical truck picks the bale up.

The photos are blurry because they were taken through plexiglass.

Read cotton facts at www.cotton.org

Once the truck has lined up with the hole in the wall, it dumps the bale onto a conveyor belt and a mechanical arm pushes the bale into the next room.

In the next room the bale is stuffed into a sack.

Another bale getting stuffed in a sack.

The covered bale continues down the conveyor where it passes over a scale to be weighed. Then it goes outside through the plastic curtain.

Once outside it is dumped into a line.

A man uses a forklift to haul off four bales at a time.
There were lots of Swift trailers in the yards.

The load barely fits inside the trailer so that driver has to be experienced. See the modules still to be ginned in the background?

While we were watching, cotton started dumping from the top of the fourth machine that separated it from its seeds. They let the cotton collect on the floor for a while.

Then they pushed it through a hole in the floor, actually it was being sucked in. That cotton was ran back through all four machines.

Coolidge Dam

...... On January 3rd, Nolan, our friend Corky and myself rode to Coolidge Dam. It is southeast of Globe, AZ just off Hwy 70. First we rode through the valley for about an hour.

Then we got onto Hwy 60 and headed east into the mountains.

......As we climbed the temperature dropped. It was supposed to get to 70° at Casa Grande this day but it was 15° cooler in the mountains. We stopped at this pull off just east of the tunnel that is east of Surprise, AZ.

.......A look down the canyon at the pull-off. We stopped here before three years ago.

Lots of bikes passed this spot while we were stopped.

...It took a while but we made it to Coolidge Dam. One of the weirdest looking dams I've ever seen. Wikipedia says it is a "reinforced concrete multiple dome and buttress dam and was built between 1924 and 1928. It's named after President Calvin Coolidge. Check Wikipedia -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolidge_Dam for a better description.

There wasn't much water in the lake but I guess there usually isn't. It was at least 50' from the top of the water to the bottom of the spillway so it would take massive amounts of water just to get one drop to go over.

......We walked out onto a couple of the "pedestals".

Looking over the spillway. See the eagle sculpture on the side of the bridge? We got dawgone cold during this ride but we thawed out by the time we got home.

January 2, 2010 Ride

The temperature got to 70° so we went out for a ride. You can see alfalfa growing in the fields by the side of the road. There are berms of sand every so often so they can flood different sections to irrigate them.

We decided to ride the Florence-Kelvin Hwy starting just south of Florence. You can see here that we got out of the agricultural area and into more natural plant growth.

I love this kind of area much better than the agricultural area. One good thing about it is that the dust doesn't blow as bad here. We were only about 25 miles from our trailer at this point.

But all good things some to an end.

But the gravel/dirt road was wide and hard packed so off we went.

We only went about 2 miles before we turned around. It was getting narrower and curvier.

Nolan just loves this tree and I'm sure he will get a closer photo of it sometime.

Wind Storm

December 22, 2009 this area of Arizona had a big wind storm. This is the view from the front of our site as the wind started to blow.

This is the view out the back of the trailer.

Then the wind really started blowing. This is the view out the front.

Out the back

Then it rained for about 45 minutes and that helped clear the air.

Out the back after the rain. There were terrible accident on I-10 and people died.

Snowbirds Amusements

Yes Snowbirds will do all kinds of things to amuse themselves. There were Christmas light contests but our camera doesn't take good night photos.

We did have a Christmas Golf Cart parade with the best decorated cart getting a certificate. The parade was led by the park fire engine.

The middle cart in this photo was the one that won.

St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery

A group of Sunscape RV Resort residents went to St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery. As you can see by the clothing, the dress code is a little strict. Hopefully my skirt wasn't too flashy. Now for the story of the monastery straight from their brochure. "In the summer of 1995, six monks arrived in the southern Arizona desert to establish St. Anthony's Monastery, carrying with them the sacred thousand-year heritage of the Holy Mountain, Athos. Since early Chrisian history, this steep and rocky peninsula in northern Greec maintained a direct link with the greatest monastic establishments of ancient Christianity in Egypt, Cappadocia, and Constantinople, thus preserving intact the wisdom of the Holy Fathers and the sacred tradition of the ancient Church. Today, the Holy Mountain consists of 20 independent monasteries and numerous sketes and hermitages, housing a few thousand Orthodox Christian monks from all over the world.
Elder Ephraim, a disciple of Elder Joseph the Hesychast, having restored and repopulated four Mt. Athos monasteries and having established several monastic communities in Greece and North America, transferred six Athonite monks to the Sonoran Desert in American to start a new monastery. Upon their arrival, the fathers began the necessary construction: building first the main church, living quarters for monks, a dining hall, and guest facilities. As the monastery expanded, more chapels were built; a vegetable garden, a small vineyard, citrus orchards, and an olive grove were soon to follow. An elaborate system of gardens, pathways, gazebo and Spanish fountains truly render the monastery and its extensive grounds an oasis in the desert."
This is the main entrance gate. Now to continue with the brochure. "The monastery is named after St. Anthony the Great, the renowned third-century ascetic of Egypt, "the father of monasticism". The main church, the catholicon, is dedicated to Saints Anthony and Nectarios the Wonder-worker, who is especially popular amoungst the Greeks. The monastery follows the coenobitic rule of monastic life. The brotherhood of over 40 monks and novices holds all things in common and follows a daily schedule of prayer and work under obedience to the abbot, their spiritual father. The monks daily program begins an hour or two before midnight with personal prayer time and spiriual reading, followed by the cycle of morning prayers and the Divine Liturgy. After a light breakfast and rest period, the monks begin their work day, attending to prayer and their tasks until evening. Tasks include, amoung others, grounds keeping, tending the various gardens, orchards, and the vineyard, construction, woodworking, publishing, food preparation and offering hospiality. The day ends with Vespers flowed by dinner and Compline."
Our first stop was outside the bookstore where one woman in our group was offered a skirt and scarf because she wasn't "properly" dressed. They have a supply of skirts and scarves for that reason. We were given some candy and water. This is the traditional kerasma (water and something sweet). A very young father lead us to St. Anthony's Church and told us about the monastery.
Although the largest of all the churches in the complex, it has the plainest exterior. You'll see what I mean as you scroll down through all the photos. During his talk, the father told us there are presently 100 Orthodox visitors staying there. Some of the visitors are families with children.


This is the top of St. Anthony's church. From the brochure: "Our daily services are conducted in this traditional Byzantine style, domed basilica church. "

An elaborate chandelier with a circular surround hangs from the church tower. Now back to the brochure, "Almost everything that you can see in here was brought in from Greece. No electric lights are used in the church except for the two fixtures over the round chanters' stands. The candles on the big brass chandelier, which represents the Heavenly Church, are lit on major feast days. The alter is located behind the curtain. "

"The hand-carved throne on the right is the Bishop's Throne." Just look at that beautiful piece of work! Notice the lion base.

Closeup of some of the wood workings.

This is the chandelier.

There are no pews in the church as the monks stand during services in these tall seats called stasidia. These can actually be used to stand or sit in two different positions. The seat, as shown, is in the high seating position. It folds forward for a lower seating position. The high arms help support the monks during the three to five hour services.
We continued our tour by walking through the main courtyard. From the brochure, 'The main monastery courtyard is formed by the monks' cells on the right, the women's guesthouse on the left and the adjoining housing complexes for visiting bishops, priests and men."

Across the courtyard is St. Nicholas' Chapel. We're just starting to see it here.

The back side of St. Nicholas' Chapel. "St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the patron saint of the sailors, is one of the most beloved saints of orthodoxy. The Divine Liturgy is sometimes held at St. Nicholas'."

The front entry. Notice the tiling on the floor and the beautiful brickwork of the arch.

The front of St. Nicholas' Chapel.

This building is a monk's house.

The orange grove was covered with netting.

Walking toward The Chapel of St. George. "The architecture of this chapel is typical of Romannia but again all the furnishings inside and all the icons were brought from Greece. Please take the time to appreciate the hand-carved iconostasis with its intricate, detailed story-telling figures."

The brick border and tiled pathways were very pretty.

Outside the Chapel of St. George.

Inside the ceilings were a work of art.

Another elaborate chandelier above a beautiful brick arch though which you can see the main section of the chapel. The first section is for non-orthodox visitors. The next room is for orthodox visitors and the front is for the monks and visiting clergy.

The chandelier in the main section of the chapel.

Some of the wood ceiling with stained-glass windows.

More of the beautiful wood ceiling.

Standing in the middle section looking toward the alter. You can see how intricate the carving is on the iconotasis.

Some of the detailed tile flooring.

The Bishops' Chair is just beautiful.

Closeup of the details.

Details of the seat.

The arm rests.

More of the multi-use chairs. There were many different carvings on the backs.

Here's what the seat looks like in the lower position.

Guesthouses.

We walked around the chapel and found this tower. We don't know if it is a bell tower or not.
More brickwork and gardens as we continued our walk.

St. Demetrios' Chapel is really small. Maybe 10 people can fit inside.

But the inside was pretty. Not as intricately carved as the other iconostatis but still pretty.

The woodwork on the outside was spectacular.

From the brochure; "Now let us answer the most frequently asked question: the significance of the three-bar cross. This is a traditional Orthodox cross, also called the Russian cross; the top small bar is the sign that was placed on the cross with the inscription "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews"; the second bar is for the hands. The bottom bar is the footrest; the reason it is slanted is this: the thief crucified on the right of Christ was saved, he went up to Heaven; the other thief went down to hell. Therefore, the right end of the bar points up to heaven and the left end down to Hell. "

More of the walk through the gardens.

Spanish fountain by St. Seraphim's Chapel.

There were even some rose bushes.

Occassionally we would see fake deer around as you can see by those at the foot of this cross. We thought they were tacky.

Bougainvillea is the most prominent flower in this area and it is beautiful. You can see me strolling along here.

Pinal County Historical Museum

Nolan and I visited the Pinal County Historical Museum that I had led a group of residents to a week before. I had told Nolan about it and he wanted to go.

.. Of course the displays of county history started with the pottery from 500 A.D. but we didn't start taking photos until the more current items. These intricately woven baskets were amazing.

Vases made of cholla (pronouced choy-a) cactus skeletons.

Three-legged table made of cholla skeleton.

Bookcase of cholla with stuffed gila monster.

Water fountain from an old school.

The two red boxes on the bottom were interesting. Chill Tonic and Swamp Root.

During Prohibition you could get a prescription for medicinal liquor.

Oh the elusive cure for fatness!

This is a combination high chair, potty chair, stroller and play table.

Read this for a chuckle.

Old office furniture and machines from the old courthouse.

There some very interesting things here. Like this Ediphone, precursor to the Dictaphone.

What wrong with this typewriter?

It has a regular QUERTY keyboard but it has two instead of one. There wasn't a shift key so the upper set is for upper case letters and the lower set is for lower case letters.

Now that's a different arrangement.

Then there were the times when you needed a portable. Just like a laptop today.

Another portable.

Sorry for the glare.

Just like today, if you have a famous name, it gets put on everything.

The museum has an extensive collection of bullets including some wooden ones.

Personal property in a home was taxed and this was one way to hide your radio. The electric cord ran up inside a leg and the speakers faced downward.

Notice the rolls of music.

No this isn't some torture devise. It's a hair curler from a beauty salon.

What this museum is most noted for is its Arizona State Prison Collection.

But before the gas chamber came the hangings. The rope from each hanging was kept and is displayed with a photo of the person hung.

These four guys wanted to be hung with the same rope.

I never saw this in the movies.

This is interesting.

Barbed wire collection.

WW II stories.

Yes POWs were brought to Arizona.

Cotton Pickin'

So we've posted photos of cotton bales along the roads before but today we saw more of the process.

I made a wrong turn but look what we found... a cotton field being harvested.

This is one of the cotton compactors that form the bales. The box is lowered to the ground before they start.

A belt inside the hopper moves the cotton to the edge where it drops into one of the compactors. The blue rail on tops of the red box is the actual compacting parts. It moves up and down plus pushes the cotton to the rear of the box.

Up close of the picker.

Here you can see the compactor in a different position. The hopper is being dumped in front of it.

The hopper operator sure dumped a lot of cotton on the ground. You can just make out the guy beside the compactor throwing some back into the box.

October Happenings

We had a Halloween party at the park but had poor attendance due to so many other things happening. Anyway here's some of the spooks out that night.

I planned to be a full bunch of grapes instead of a half of a bunch but this is all the coverage I got with 38 balloons. There were enough balloons there to make it hard to sit or do much of anything.

We put an entry into a Relay for Life fundraiser called "Dress your Banana Split". Creative people, huh? Do you understand the Addressed Banana? Addressed - a dressed. LOL We just thought we would take some bananas for kicks and all we used was a marker for our "costume". Yeap, the Siamese Twins were our contribution. Maybe next year we'll have triples.

Winter Destination

We got to Sunscape RV Resort by Casa Grande, AZ on October 1st. We were getting all set up and this is what I spot. Yep, a nail in the tire. Nolan was taking it off the next day so he could take it into town and he notices the tire across the way looks low. He pulls out the tire pressure gauge and it reads 30 psi. As usual we had checked them the morning of the 1st before we hit the road. The one with the nail in it was at 102 psi so we aired it up to 110 psi like it is supposed to be. All the rest were fine. Nolan took the one with the nail into town and they said it couldn't be patched or plugged so he bought a new one. Only $375! Yep these tires are expensive.
Once we got the second tire off, we found a nail in it. This one the shop was able to patch. During five years of living in our RV full-time, these are the only nails we've gotten in our tires.

Last spring we stayed on this RV site for two weeks and liked it so we rented it for six months this winter season. I didn't get the Activities Director job here until fall but it worked into our plans. As you can see, the site is on a corner.

Nolan got on top of the trailer and took some photos. We're in a lot that backs up to the outside so there's no one behind us. This is looking south.
This is just to the left of the previous photo. People walk their dogs around the outside of the fence.

This is the view to the west... in front of the trailer.
This is the front gate. Most residents have a card they swipe to open the gate but as an employee, I received a clicker. So much easier.

...As you drive past the Welcome Center, you can see the west side of the Clubhouse. Didn't take a photo of the front side so you'll just have to imagine it. LOL The saquaro cactus is a replacement. The much older, armed one that was there was toppled by wind last spring.

This is the east side of the clubhouse where a small separate building housed the post office.
Next to the Clubhouse is the Community Center. This is where events that need a sound system are held.
The pool sits behind the Clubhouse and beside the Community Center.

View of the pool from the road. Still seeing the back side of the clubhouse.

Inside the Clubhouse is seating for meals and card games. The kitchen is in the clubhouse and meals are served from it three times a week during the season.

One side room has a fireplace.

My office is also located in the Clubhouse. This photo is from my first day at work and I am in training. The air conditioning isn't working so it's probaby 80° or more in there. The a/c was repaired on 10/8/09.

This building is the Activities Center. Most card playing is done here. It also holds a library, a billards room, a weight room, a laundry room and a conference room.