We ended up our winter sojourn and started heading out – first stop was in Casa Grande, AZ where we have family. When we left Julian it was about 65 and when we got to Casa Grande a few hours later it was 102! HOT! Laddy is very sensitive to heat lately with his heart condition and I don’t handle extreme heat very well either, so even before we unhitched and leveled Jeff got the electricity plugged in and I got both A/Cs going. Right next to our site was a huge saguaro cactus that was blooming – here’s a picture showing the size of it and a closeup of the blooms at the top.
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Here in Julian CA – with a great view!
We spent a couple of months in Julian CA this spring. We both have family in San Diego County and Jeff likes his doctor who he’s seen for several years.
Julian is beautiful in the springtime! We arrived just a few days after the last snowfall in the area and there were little patches of snow on the ground. Our RV park is just south a few miles from the town of Julian and is on a ridge with great views in both directions – to the west you can see almost to the ocean. To the east you can see the Cuyamaca Mountains and a little bit of the desert behind them.
It was very green the whole time we spent in Julian, where the rest of San Diego County is green for a few weeks and then starts to turn brown again. Also, lots of people who live in and around Julian plant bulbs, so there were daffodils all over the place, in front of homes, meadows full of them, etc. They have a Daffodil festival in April, and after the daffodils there are lilacs blooming everywhere and a Lilac festival. And in the RV park there were lots of irises which is my favorite flower.
Here are some pictures of the local wildlife (lots of turkeys!) and the views:
Wintering in Yuma, AZ
We spent a couple of months in Yuma, AZ in January and February to be in a fairly warm climate and so I could visit some doctors.
We stayed in an RV park in the northeast part of the city. To get to the park we traveled through about 6 miles of lettuce and broccoli fields! We saw workers harvesting crops every time we went into town or back from town. It’s all “stoop” labor, bending to cut the produce and straightening up to put it on the tables that were attached to tractors and moved through the fields. What hard work!!
We didn’t do much sightseeing while in Yuma although we did travel up to Quartzside one day which is about an hour north. It’s a very small town with huge RV parks all around it, some with hookups and some dry camping. There’s a huge RV show in January in Quartzside every year but we waited till that was over.
A new hobby – Amigurumi
I’ve recently started making crocheted stuffed animals and dolls. It’s called Amigurumi.
Crocheting is easier on my thumbs which both have arthritis. I can’t do too much each day, but I do a little every day.
I plan to donate them to a police station for kids who are involved in a crisis.
Here are the ones I’ve finished:
Julian, CA
We travelled to San Diego County to see our family members who live there in between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Julian is a cute little town in the mountains and sits at just over 4,000 ft. It does get cold here in the winter and it snows once or more a year.
Our site at the KQ Ranch RV Resort, a members only RV park, was in the west side of the park up on a ridge. The views to the west are spectacular! I think I can see all the way to the ocean! Also, the sunrises in the east and the sunsets in the west are great. Here’s a picture of a sunset – zoom in and you might see the ocean but more likely it’s the marine layer over the coast.
So today is December 10th and at almost 7am it’s 32 degrees! It rained all day yesterday and the winds were crazy – gusts in the 40mph range. Our rig rocked and banged and it felt like we were on a small ship on the ocean. It kept our boy Laddy pretty scared. But this morning the wind has died down it’s just COLD!
Cosanti Foundry
While staying in Congress, we drove into the Phoenix area to tour the Cosanti Foundry. The foundry makes bells – big and little ones, out of bronze and ceramics. The bells are all works of art and are done using methods that have been used for thousands of years. They use soft damp earth to form the molds and after creating a bell in a mold, the earth is simply pushed down and used again for the next batch.
The property itself is like a work of art. The creator and original owner of the property was Paolo Scoleri, an Italian architect who was a student at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesan West facility.
Scoleri had a vision of people living and working together in communes. Between 1955 and 1965 he built several structures on his property using the “earthmound” construction, where you pile up earth into a mound the size that you want the structure to be, then you pour concrete into forms on the tops and sides of the mound. When the concrete sets, you remove the earth and you’re left with a full or partial dome building. A dome built in this fashion is very strong, and if it’s large you can put a couple of poles up for support. He build several half-dome building with the half-dome either on the north or south side to make use of passive solar. If you have the half-dome on the north half of the structure then it’s protected from the sun during the hot summer months and in the winter months the sun can shine down into the structure and warm it.
Scoleri also built a “commune” using a lot of the earthmound construction and other methods about 70 miles north of Phoenix and called it Arcosanti. It’s still in use today, with passive heat and cooling systems, orchards etc. People can go to Arcosanti for a few months and learn the methods of construction and lifestyle that are in use there.
These constructions and lifestyle methods never caught on which saddened Scoleri. He did a few architectural projects, at least one in Scottsdale, one in Italy, but his passion was the work he did at Cosanti and Arcosanti.
Here are pictures of the property, foundry and structures:
We’re in the AZ desert
We are in Congress Az for a couple of weeks. It’s beautiful here! Here’s a picture looking out from our front door:
Hoover Dam
While staying in Bullhead City we drove up to the Hoover Dam. It’s about 1.5 hours north of where we’re staying.
The drive up had an area with some interesting rock formations. I love the geology of the Southwest! The lava formations from ancient volcanos makes weird shapes in the hills as the softer layers erode away, leaving just the lava that bubbled and pushed up through the earth millions of years ago.
The dam itself was impressive! We had not yet seen the new bridge across the dam gorge and it is HIGH UP! I wanted to take a couple of pictures from the new bridge but driving across there are high walls on each side. Couldn’t see anything! There is a parking area and walkway up a steep pathway so you can walk out on the new bridge, but it was a bit too strenuous looking for us. And, we would have had to leave Laddy in the truck and it was a warm day. So we bypassed that.
We drove across the old bridge and to an overlook high up on the south side. We could see part of Lake Mead, the back side (water side) of the dam and the new bridge in the background. The dam is amazing but what I couldn’t believe is how low the water level is. I’ve heard about it on the news and know that there’s a multi-year drought going on, but OMG! According to some news stories, if the water drops much more there won’t be enough to run the power plant which produced electricity for much of the area.
While at the lookout we saw a WWII pillbox up on the hill and learned that the bridge was fairly new during WWII and there was a lot of concern that it would be bombed and destroyed. There were 4 pillboxes during the war and this one was retained as part of the history. During WWII some of the engineers of the dam were asked to help devise ways to protect the dam. One suggestion was to “camoflauge” the dam and build a dummy one downriver. That would have been an interesting project for something so immense! It did not happen though, and the dam was safe during the war.
There is still a lot of security at the dam. It can no longer be accessed from both ends (remember it was the main highway through the area until the new bridge was built. There is a security station and we were pulled over so they could inspect the truck bed which is covered. The vehicle ahead of us was two ladies with a storage contained strapped to the top of the vehicle and they made those ladies climb up on the vehicle and unlock/open the container. They are serious!
We also drove to an overlook for the Boulder Bay part of Lake Mead. It again showed dramatically how low the water level is! There are large islands in the bay, only little tips were visible for many years and how you can see the tips on another color to show how low the water is. We got a picture with a sailboat in the foreground of the island that shows how big those islands are now.
All in all, it was spectacular! We’ve both seen it before but it never gets old!
Here are pictures:
In Bakersfield we stayed in an orange grove!
The RV Park we stayed at in Bakersfield CA was literally situated in an orange grove. They had cleared out trees to make roads and pull-thru sites but left 3 trees in between each site Most of the trees are very mature and they were loaded with green oranges just started to turn orange as we were there in October. In December and January they’ll be full of ripe juicy oranges and the guests are invited to pick as many as they want! Yum! Here’s a pic:
While in Bakersfield…
We spent a week in Bakersfield, CA not to see wonderful sights, but just to kill some time while we’re heading south as the weather turns cooler. There’s not a lot to do or see in Bakersfield. It’s high desert and a lot of oil and agriculture. We did go see the latest Bond movie (No Time To Die). It was great!
Other than that, I took walks, we did our normal chores of shopping, laundry, etc. We’re retired so we can do nothing if we want!
Not that Bakersfield is a bad place!
One cool thing is that our RV Park is in an orange grove! Here’s my post about that (click here).