Organ Pizza and Other Fun

No, we didn't eat liver pizza!  We went to the Organ Stop Pizza where they have a huge theatre size Werlitzer organ.  They bought it in the 1970s and had it rebuilt using the parts of defunct organs. The organ was enlarged in 1997 to a four keyboard with nearly 6000 pipes.  The wind required comes from four large turbine blowers visible from outside the building.  The organ is installed in a room with 43 foot ceilings.  Four chambers with the works are visible inside and many of the precussion instruments are installed sround the room.  The organ is installed on a 8000 lb rotating hydraulic elevator that raises, lowers and turns the organ.

Oh! and the music!!  The organist (one of three) played all by heart and controlled all the elements around the room as well.  He took requests so you just knew that it wasn't all pre-programmed. 

We sat for a couple of hours with our friends and we all could have stayed longer.  The music ranged from semi-classical to pop to old time to hymns.  There were even a couple of short singalongs - and people did.

If you are ever in the Phoenix area, you can't miss this!!

I forgot to metion the cat puppets that came out from behind a curtain.  They were all different, with personality. They  - well I won't call it dancing - bopped to the music. 

Yesterday we went to downtown Phoenix on the light rapid transit.  The downtown was bright, modern, clean and QUIET.  We have never seen the downtown of a major city with such a traffic-less downtown.  Not many people either.  Since it was early Friday afternoon, we are not sure if it is like this all the time.  We took a few pictures but I forgot to bring them with me over to the hotspot so I will have to post them next time.

The convention centre is huge and nicely decorated, quite modern.  The ballroom can host several thousand to a sit down dinner.

We enjoyed the plants that are beginning to flower in the area.  There were also pistachio nuts on the trees.  Sorry I forgot the pictures today.  Check back on the next post and I will insert the pictures into this post.

Casa Grande, Cacti and Quilts

We went to the Casa Grande ruins yesterday.  It is about an hour southeast of Phoenix. These are the remains of an ancient Hohokam farming village as well a Great House.  The Great House is what I thought of when we decided to go.  We had seen the site about 30 years ago (yikes!) and we remembered it as just the Great House with an administration building of some kind and a cactus garden.  Now they have excavated the buildings of a community including homes and a playing field.

The Great House is four storeys tall and 60 feet long.  Its walls face the four compass points.  Openings align with the moon and stars at particular times.  What the buildings exact purpose was remains a mystery.  In order to protect the structure from the elements, a steel and concrete canopy has been built over it.  The other walls of buildings have been covered with a cement coating.  Also the bases of the buildings are about 7 feet below where you walk and are filled in to preserve the walls.

The Hohokum people had a distinct culture by 300 CE.  They lived in permanent settlements, made pottery and traded.  They developed irrigation canals and since they are in a dry region, learned to tap into the groundwater.  There is evidence that they traded with tribes from the West Coast and from Mexico. 

Around 1150, the people began to congregate in larger communities and open arrangements of housing gave rise to walled communities.  The Great House has been dated as prior to 1350 and its size indicates that indicates that this village may have been more important than most.

The Hohokum culture seems to have lasted until the 1400s.  When missionaries came through in the late 1600s, all they found was the empty shell of a village.  The nearby Pima Indians told the missionaries that their ancestors were “ho-ho-KAHM”,meaning all gone or used up.  In the late 19^th century, souvenir hunters threatened to destroy the site and in 1892, Casa Grande became the nation’s first archeological preserve.

In this area of Arizona is part of the Sonoran Desert and is home to the saguaro (saw-WAH-row) cacti.  These are the cacti with “arms” that you see in the cowboy movies and the Peanuts cartoon strip.  I just love looking at them.  They seem to be like snow flakes: each one is different.  I wondered why some had many branches and some only a few so I bought a book at Casa Grande that would answer my questions.  (Frequently Asked Questions about the Saguaro, Janice Emily Bowers, Western National Parks Association, Tucson, Arizona)

They first branch when they are about 15 feet tall and have reached their maximum girth.  Some believe that the appearance of the branches is random while others think that they grow more towards the south. The faster a cactus grows, the more branches it sends out.  Fast growth is associated with wetter climates.  In areas that are really dry, the cacti may never branch. The more branches a cactus has, the more fruits and seeds it can produce.  Of course, the more seeds there are, the likelier it is that a few will germinate, grow to maturity and reproduce themselves. Over a lifetime a large saguaro might shed 40 million seeds.

These cacti are susceptible to drought and frost and the habits of animals.  Despite the prickles, small animals eat them.  Large animals such as cattle, trample the small plants.  Catastrophic frosts seems to be the biggest threat.  The expansion of the large cities threatens their habitat.  For some time, the existence of the saguaro seemed to be at risk.  In the last part of the twentieth century, a survey of the saguaro populations determined that there had been a dramatic turnaround.  I sure hope that this means that they will be around for a long time!!

I went to the Tucson Quilt Show last Friday with a tour.  $59 for the bus trip and admission to the show. This will only be interesting to a few of you no doubt.  It was a good show but no better than the Saskatoon Show other than there were more vendors.  I took a few pictures and also got the DVD to look at all the quilts again.  The pictures aren't great since it is hard to get a clear shot in a crowd.

The newspaper on this one folded out from the quilt.

You'll have to turn your computer sideways for this one!

This one too!

This one was by the featured quilter - whose name escapes me.  She seems to like skeletons.

Not snowing here!

We are in Mesa, Arizona now.  It is part of the Phoenix metro area.  It has been about 20C most days since we got here.  Once again the internet service is poor so I am in the library, writing the blog.

On our way here, we stopped at Benson which is on the east side of Tucson - maybe 30 -40 miles.  From there we went to Tombstone to see the OK Corral.  They have a re-enactment - in fact several- but we only saw one.  This was more than enough.  The two main things I learned was that the location of the shootout was not the OK Corral (this was dreamed up on a 1931 movie) but in a back lane and that the fight was rather pathetic.  Sort of like a fist fight gone wrong because they all had guns.  The re-enactment was kind of fun with some humour put into it but the historical accuracy must have suffered.  Anyway, here are some pictures of Tombstone (a tourist haven) and the fight.

He was Wyatt Earp.

                                                            He was Doc Holliday.

Once we got set up in Mesa in a resort called Towerpoint, we took a day trip out to Tortilla Flat, a few miles east of Mesa.  We had been out there years ago and mainly remembered that we drove and drove and then there was just a tiny general store.  We decided to make the drive again because we saw it featured in the tourist info.  The drive up was just lovely and we were surprised that neither of us had remembered how lovely this mountain desert country is.  Tortilla Flat has turned into a tourist place too (surprise!) and had live entertainment, saloons and a couple of places filled with souvenirs.  At least there was a little more to it than last time.  Oh! and we did eat delicious ice cream.

Tomorrow I am going to a quilt show in Tucson.  It is a day trip.  There is a guild here at the resort that seems to be very active.  I have signed up for a class in putting photos onto fabric.  There are a number of other classes running as well.  Many women leave their machines and equipment right in the sewing room.  The resort has provided a couple of  sewing machines and a long arm quilting machine as well as the large room.  It is a pretty impressive  set-up.  I joined the guild for $25 and for that I can go to any of the classes.

I should mention that I have been taking the photos with our little camera rather than the Canon because it takes way too long to upload pictures to the blog.  I guess the Canon would be OK if we had good internet but you know the story on that.

Arizona

Good news.  I can get back into my pictures again.  I don't know what the problem was but I was able to put pictures into my old post so check it out again.

Today we drove to Benson, Arizona which is a little to the east of Tucson.  The land was still dry and desolate but there were more mountains.

The RV park is very nice and has nice scenery around it.

Tomorrow we are going to Tombstone.  Cowboys!  The shootout is at 2 pm.

I forgot to mention that a lot of the photos are taken out the front window of the motorhome at 65 mph.  We drive slowly by the standards here.  In New Mexico the speed limit on the inter-state highway was 80 mph (about 130 in kph).  In Arizona it is 75.  We are passed a lot but since there are 4 lanes, it isn't a problem.  We can't go any faster because we are limited by what is allowed in towing a Honda CRV.

Fort Stockton Snow

You are Going to Laugh

Monday, January 9.  Fort Stockton, Texas

Some Snowbirds we turned out to be.  We are in Fort Stockton, Texas.  It snowed last night and this morning.  It is heavy wet snow and snow melted but the temperature only got to 34F today.

We spent a couple of days in San Antonio and saw a couple of the missions there. They were established in the early 1700s. They were of course to spread the Catholic faith (and Spanish culture) to the Indians  The Spaniards established missions in the San Antonio area to thwart the western movement of the French from Louisiana.  The Indians of the region (Coahuiltecans) had been nomadic but between the nomadic tribes from the north pressing into their areas and the diseases introduced by the Europeans, they were relatively willing recruits for the Franciscans.  They were provided with food and refuge at the missions.  The men were instructed in the use of European arms so that they could assist in the defence of the missions.  Later they were included in armed patrols in Spanish Texas that pursued Apache and Commanche Indians.

One of the missions we saw had been refurbished.  The U.S. department in charge of State Parks planned to restore the remaining missions but the Catholic Church claimed the mission lands back after the first restoration was underway.  The government was not inclined to continue its work when they no longer controlled the missions so no additional restorations have occurred because the Catholic church does not have the money.  It is rather a shame because the first restoration is quite remarkable.

The trip from San Antonio to Fort Stockton ran through some really dry and desolate land.  I know there has been a drought here and it is winter so maybe that is part of the reason it looks the way it does.

January 10 Las Cruces, New Mexico

Most of the snow melted in Fort Stockton before we left this morning. The roads were clear and dry. We ran through more desolate, dry country. We saw and drove through some low mountains which seemed to create windy conditions.

There were a lot of mesas on the road to Las Cruces.  some were very broad and some were narrow at the top.  One was so narrow that it looked like a pyramid from a distance.

We will look around the area tomorrow.

Moving On

We have had essentially no internet access since we got back to Brownsville on December 31.  This access at San Antonio is the first. The trip back was boring once we got through the snow from Regina to Minot.  The weather was pretty good after that.

Some of you will know that when we left for Saskatoon, we knew that our motorhome would not start.  So immediately after the New Year, the fun began.  We had to be towed 55-60 miles to Pharr, west up the Rio Grande Valley, to a truck centre where the motorhome could be fixed.  Luckily, Good Sam (our road assistance provider) sent an experienced operator who knew how to ready a diesel motorhome to be towed. (Much to Dalton's relief!!)  Even better, they paid for it to be towed that far.

We stayed in Pharr at a hotel for 2 nights while they diagnosed and fixed the MH.  It was the HEUI (pronounced hugh-y) pump (for those who are interested in such things).  Many, many dollars later we were back on the road on Wednesday evening and could spend Thursday saying good bye to old friends and new.

We have two nights here in San Antonio.  We are going on a city tour tomorrow to see a couple of things that we missed last time.  We can't do a whole day tour because of Casey (our dog). 

I have three new observations about Texas:

1.  The palm trees here are messy.  The palm fronds grow out in a fan, with each branch being fan shapped at the end.  As the tree grows, it drops the old fronds as well as the outer coating on the truck which I suppose isn't needed as the fronds drop.  Anyway, they leave a lot of debris around as all this falls off.  I don't remember this in California or Florida where I remember the palm trees as taller with just a few flat fronds at the top.

2.  People have memorials for deceased loved ones made out of decal material and put them in the back window of their vehicle.  Some are just a few words (In memory of ...) and some are full back window features with coloured pictures.

3.  Texans fly the Texas flag almost as much as the U.S. flag.