The usual sunny clear start to the day. Temperature climbed up to 29°C by afternoon.
Earlier in the week we visited the Casa Grande Ruins, but forgot the camera. We went back today, with the camera, and got some photos.
Casa Grande (Spanish for Large House) was built around 1350 by the Ancient Sonoran Desert People ( to give them their politically correct title). The house itself was 4 stories high, which was quite an achievement back then, it is built out of a clay like material, and has disintegrated over the years. In 1932 a large roof structure was placed over the house to slow down the deterioration.
Like many older civilisations the sun and moon played a major role in their lives, Casa Grande was built to identify solar and lunar events as shown below.
The Ancient Sonoran Desert People were also masters of irrigation and had been irrigating nearby land for nearly 1,000 years before Casa Grande was built. There are many smaller ruins surrounding the main house.
One hundred years after the Casa Grande was built, the area became uninhabited; no one knows for certain why. Theories range from droughts, floods and aliens!
While we were out we toured around some of the back roads, there were many cacti in the area.
Not all cacti are green!
Although most of the landscape is desert, in this area there are many areas of green fields, which seems out of place. There is a very extensive system of irrigation canals around the area to help keep the land fertile.
We also came across this house on our travels:
Below is a more “normal” house:
On the way
back we passed the local airfield where there was a largish plane that I didn’t recognise. We dove around the airfield trying to get a better view of it, but no luck. I found a picture of it on the internet though:
(reproduce with the permission of John Olafson)
It is a WWII era Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer, which is a Navy version of the B24 Liberator. There is a war-birds and vintage aircraft restoration outfit based at the airfield, and they were doing some work on the aircraft.
Back at the trailer I started working on putting an outdoor Ethernet plug at the back of the trailer. Simple job of drilling a 1″ hole through the fiberglass and wood backing material. Wrong! Some evil worker at the factory knew exactly where I was going to drill and sandwiched a metal plate between the wood and the fiberglass. Wood spade drills don’t go through metal. Suffice it to say, hammer, screwdriver (used as chisel) and some well chosen words got the problem sorted after a couple of hours.
With all this out the way we got talking to our Ontario neighbours again. The small world started to envelop us again. The wife, Michelle, was vice principal at Osgoode High where our two kids went and she recalls their names. They also know a number of our friends from the Osgoode area, and it is quite likely we have been at the same parties.