Quartzsite

We are in Quartszite, Arizona now. Quartzsite is 125 miles from Phoenix, west on Highway 10.  It is a town where people camp in the desert and is now a service town to all the people who come to camp, search for rocks and escape winter.  I had a vision of a quaint little town but it has a McDonald's so you can imagine how quaint it is.  It does have a few interesting places though.  The book store is one such place.

This store has a really large selection of old books and magazines.  The drawing card is the owner though.  He walks about , naked from the waist down except for a .....  tea cozy - I guess you would call it-  over his private parts. (OK Now none of you will ever be able to look at a tea cozy in the same way again.  Sorry.) He is skinny as a rail and it is quite a sight.  People were having their picture taken with him.  I think he is one of the few things left of the old Quartzite.

We drove around the area and saw some people dry (no services) camping in the desert.  Some areas seemed OK but since it is the off -season it seemed a bit lonely.  I am sure that all the Americans had fire arms so I suppose that they worry less.  One area was quite flat but another was near the mountains (hills) and was more picturesque but more difficult to find places to park.

Here is the area where people camp for up to 2 weeks that is just to the west of Quartzsite.

We opted to camp at a place in town, fairly primitive but it has good wifi!!  We missed the high season which ended in January with a huge swap meet, RV show and a rock show (that would be the hard natural rock, not music), among other things.  Thousands come for that.  A bit of the swap meet is left so we had a walk through but it had merchandise like the one we saw on Mesa.

Tomorrow we are off to Yuma.

Towerpoint Festival

Towerpoint is the name of the RV Report where we have been staying  since January.  Since we are leaving tomorrow for Quartzite, I thought I would post a bit about the resort.  Here is our site:

There are many activities here – clubs etc and they recently had a festival that had a showcase of some of the activities here as well as a parade and many other events.  Considering that there is little space to create a parade, they did a really good job of  having a fun time.  It is Arizona’s centennial year so that was the theme.  Did you know that in 1940, the population of Arizona was under half a million and is now (2010) over 6 million?    How is that for growth!!  Dalton says that industries were moved from the west coast during the Second World War so that the Japanese could not easily bomb them.  That began the growth for the area. 

we visited all the displays from the various activity displays but we only took quilting pictures. (Wonder why?!)

Anyway, first I will show you some pictures of the display  from the quilting group.

These were done at a class.  for $25 you can join the guild and take any of the classes offered.

The entries in the show were all amazing.

Now here are some pictures of the fesival parade.

A real cowboy who could do tricks with a rope.

This is supposed to be the state capitol building.

Isn't it amazing what few resources but lots of time can produce?!

Tomorrow we are on to Quartzite to camp in the bare desert (with hundreds of others).  Should be interesting.

Arizona Oprey

We have been having a good time, just living here in Mesa.  Visiting, potlucks, etc.  The weather continues to be uniformly lovely.

On Wednesday we went to the Arizona Oprey put on by the Braleens, a talented family who have 15 people involved in the enterprise, some behind the scenes.  We went to a noon show that had a Rock and Roll theme. (They have a country show, a mixed show, and others.)  The performers were all seasoned musicians.  The one who acted as MC could play countless instruments, including the keyboard, trumpet, sax (several sizes), and the guitar.  There was one stage and then large screens on each side so that you could see everything.

There were 500 people at the show and they served a full meal to them in, I think they said, 22 minutes.  Wow!  And the coffee, tea and lemonade flowed throughout the meal.  Each table sat 8 or 9.  We went with two other couples and there were four others at our table.  They were friends of our friends.  Since you can see that the numbers don't work, Dalton sat on the end of our 8 and one man sat at the next table where he knew people.

The show was fabulous.  They sang and played all sorts of old R&R, with the arrangements that were from the original hits.  Great voices and talent on instruments!!

I didn't get great pictures - I was enjoying the show and didn't feel like concentrating on pictures.  Here are a couple to give you the feeling for it.

It is a bit hard to see but there are a line of instruments all across the front and they play them all.

This is  man who was the MC.  He was with the Tokens years ago and is the high voice on the Lion King song,  The Lion Sleeps Tonight or Aweemewheh (sp??). 

We were obviously over to the side but this gives you an idea of the set-up.

The tickets were $32 each and you got a full hot meal for that and about 2 1/2 hours of entertainment. Well worth the price.

Copper Mine II

I can upload pictures today.  Hallellujah!

Here you can see a few more of the "stairs".

You can see a little of the natural vegetation in the foreground.  The soil doesn't support much.

Here is a bit more of the ground showing.  This is up the valley to the east.

I wonder how they complain about the oilsands when they do this. (Dalton thinks the mining area was about 20 miles long.)  This is apparently one of several mines in the area. I think one is underground though.

The man we met said that if they find a crystal or gem pocket they usually just wreck it because it is too time-consuming and expensive to bother saving.  If any crystals are saved, it is usualy because a worker puts it in his picket.  The company apparently doesn't mind if they do this if they don't interfere with production.

Copper Mine

We have had such beautiful weather and then we had some rain yesterday and it is cooler today.  I know, it is still warmer than where you are.

On Monday we (three couples from Saskatoon) went for a drive in the country and decided to see if we could find a copper mine that was in the area. (We started out going tothe casino in Globe.) the copper mine was a bit of a drive but we found it south of Globe which is east of Mesa.

This is what the country looked like on the way.

After asking one of the locals, we found our way to the copper mine operated by Asarco.  They had a visitors' viewing area and we were fortunate to arrive there while a man who worked looking for gems and crystals happened to be there. He may have been a geologist, I think.)  He was telling the person he came with about copper mining but he soon had an audience of about 10 so he talked to us all.  From what I understood, you can mine copper by taking it out as an ore on trucks or you can use acid to make a slurry of it that you pipe to a processing facility.  This mine had both.  I think which process you use depends on the formation that the copper is in.  If I had better internet access, I woud have looked this up for you but as it is, I can barely get the pictures to upload.  (Did you ever see an upload progress bar move backward??)

Sorry the quality isn't better.  The little dots are huge trucks that carry 300 tons of ore at a time!  The "steps"are each 50-60 feet high.  Dalton counted 18 steps in one place.

I will try to upload another picture.  The slowness is excruciating!!

No luck so I will have to try again next time.

Pictures At Last

Today I can add pictures so here they are.  The one above is a major downtown street in Phoenix on a Friday afternnoon (just after lunch).
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We also saw some nice flowers beginning to come out and some pistachios growing.  Also there was a gorgeous Catholic church.  The church had wonderful stained glass wondows but it did't seem appropriate to take pictures in a functioning church.

I also promised pictures of the fountain at Fountain Hills near Scottsdale. I rotated the pictures where I saved them but that didn't stay when I donloaded it.  I can't see how to do that on the blog.  (Penny, any suggestions?)

This is the view from the Sports Bar where we had lunch. 

Today (Sunday) We are going back to Scottsdale to see Dalton's cousin and her husband.  they have a winter home there.

Phoenix, Scottsdale and Fountain Hills

 Today I don't seem to be able to post pictures so I will try that again tomorrow.

On Sunday we went to dinner at my friend Evelyne’s.  Those of you from Winnipeg may remember her as my neighbour across the street  when I was growing up.  She moved to Phoenix over 30 years ago and now lives in Scottsdale.  We had  a delicious dinner with Evelyne and her husband Telly. They are both of Greek heritage so you can imagine how good the food was.   They live in a gated community in a lovely home.  We almost caught up on the many years since we were last together.  Oh! and if any of you watched the expensive car auction from Scottsdale last weekend, she lives quite near there.

The next day, we went to Fountain Hills east of Scottsdale.  A park was built in what was then a desert and now it is in a park with development all around it.   It erupts on the hour and is quite spectacular. It rises 560 feet in the air.  Dalton read somewhere that it is the tallest fountain in the world but we couldn’t find any tourist literature to confirm that.  We went to the park which has a 28 acre lake and then had lunch in a sports bar across the street so we saw a second eruption from there.

Yesterday we waited for a service man who didn’t come but he did show up today so we got our water heater fixed.  Cold showers didn’t seem too appealing!

The weather has been beautiful- in the 70s (20sC) every day.  So far, it has been nice every day.  Not much wind which is good for wind-phobic Dalton.  I just like the lack of insects.  You can leave the door open and no critters come in.

Quilting news:  The guild in this park has about 100 members.  Now some may be like me and just join for a short period.  I went to a meeting tonight and there were about 50 there.  I was impressed.  I think that I mentioned that the guild has its own room, irons and boards, sewing machines, supplies and a longarm quilter.  The longarm quilter and 2 sewing machines are provided by the resort.  One project that they will be doing soon is making dresses for girls in third world countries from pillow cases.  Apparently predators will not go after little girls who are properly dressed and look as if they have a family.  If anyone is interested, the website is http://dressingagirlaroundtheworld.com.  I haven’t checked it out but it seems like a good project.

The quilt guild is also getting ready for a quilting exhibition at the park festival in March. Also next week they are making a cover for a small portfolio or a Kindle/Kobo so I may go and try that.  Unless of course we are too busy getting ready to leave the next day.