Sometime in the middle of the night, I turned 59. Fifty-nine!!
It hits me as such a weird number.
It happens to also be the year I was born but that doesn’t have anything
to do with anything, just a fun once in a lifetime oddity.
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Back
in the first week we were here in Picacho, we met Curt…a very friendly
talkative man. I know this because not
only did he stop by several times to talk to us but I saw him talking to other
campers. He and his wife were up here
for a getaway weekend…they live in Maricopa, about 50 miles away. He told us about an outreach ministry he does
on Saturdays at a local Maricopa park…hot dog giveaway. He talked about it several times and
encouraged us to stop by, even gave us a business card with all pertinent
information…including personal cell number.
I tacked it up on the cupboard for future reference. The first Saturday after we heard about it was
the Chihuahua races in Superior…the second Saturday we spent the day with Bryan
and Linda Schumaker…today we kept the day open to ride over to Maricopa to help
Curt in whatever way we could. Pulled up
and saw a pavilion with a sign indicating a church activity…the pavilion was
decorated…the grill was going…food stuff was on the tables. Yay! We
found the place…or at least we thought we did until we talked to the man in the
red shirt. It went like this:
Hi! We’re looking
for Curt…is he around? I don’t know a Curt but he could
very well be involved and I don’t know him.
Well,
he’s involved in a hot dog lunch ministry…we met him at a campground a few
weeks ago…he invited us over to hang out. Here’s his card with his name…does it
ring a bell? No, I
don’t recognize the name but, there’s an event going on…Walk for the Cross…maybe
he’s walking with the group and will be here when it’s over. Do you do this every week? He said he had a weekly outreach ministry…at
a pavilion by the pond. Oh, no, this is a
special event…one time only...there are other pavilions, maybe he’s at one of
those. Okay, thanks…we’ll walk around and check it out.
 |
| Not dressed for walking in 90 degree heat |
First
Kim called the number on the card…it went straight to a message that said the
mailbox had not been set up. Hmmm. So we decided to walk in our riding clothes
on a 90o day around the pond to check out the other pavilion. Went one direction and then walked back in
front of the occupied pavilion and the man in the red shirt calls out “Do you
want a hot dog? We’ve got plenty.” 😏
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Since
we were there and had nothing else to do,
we rode around the Copper Sky Park. It’s quite a large community park and well
done…sports fields, community center, pavilions around a fishing lake, nice
bathrooms, dog park. We didn’t go into
the community center but it was a large building. The whole area is well kept and has ample
parking. Maricopa can be proud of this
community gem.
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As we
were leaving Maricopa we decided to go the Ak-Chin Casino…actually it was
Harrah’s Ak-Chin Casino. It was a spur
of the moment thing…we’ve gone to Odawa before when they had live music, but it’s
not something we do often. I work too
hard for my money to give it to a machine, but today was my birthday and I
threw caution to the wind. It was a fun
couple of hours and we’ve spent more on meals than we lost today so I’m good
with that.
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Took
the long way back to camp…had no particular reason to hurry back to camp. Well, other than starting the packing up process. So that’s what Kim did when we got back…took
down his scopes, cleaned out the back of the truck and repacked stuff in there,
put the bicycles on the front of the truck, etc. We’ve decided to head out tomorrow…whether we
leave before or after church is still a plan in the works. But as Rafiki said “It is time.”
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We’ve
been putting stickers on the ceiling from places that we’ve visited. There are five National Park or Monument
stickers up there. Last year we put the
first National Park sticker up there from Carlsbad Caverns…it says ‘CAVE’…that
makes sense. Then it was a Big Bend Nat’l
Park sticker. It says ‘BIBE’…that doesn’t
make sense. This year we bought one from
Saguaro Nat’l Park that had ‘SAGU’ on it.
Each one different…what gives?
Well on the back of the SAGU sticker was this information:
Where
does this abbreviation come from? The
National Park Service assign each unit it manage (National Parks, National
Monuments, National Historic Sites, etc.) a unique abbreviation code to help standardize
communications both internally and externally.
But due to the large number of units involved something as simple as
SNP, for example, was not going to work because which national park would you
be referring to---Saguaro, Sequois or Shenandoah? Can you figure out the basic pattern they
ended up using for these abbreviations (as in most cases, there are exception
to the rule)?
1. A
four-letter combination
2. If a
unit name consists of two words then it’s assigned the first two letters of
each word (i.e. GRAND CANYON National Park = GRCA)
3. If a
unit consists of only one word then its’ assigned the first four letters of
that word. (i.e. ARCHES National Park =
ARCH)
So
become a National Park System Insider by learning and using these
abbreviations. For fun and practicing
your detective skills – see how many exceptions to the rule you can find!
I read this and then later that night before
the light was shut off, I glanced up at the ceiling and excitedly said “Hey
Joshua Tree is one of the exceptions!”
Kim didn’t have a clue where this random comment came from….so I told
him the criteria for the four letter park designations and that was why the Big
Bend sticker had BIBE on it and that the sticker for Joshua Tree was one of the
exceptions to the two word name rule. Its
sticker has JTNP on it. And that
Carlsbad Caverns was an exception to the one word rule…it should be CARL
instead of CAVE. But Casa Grande
National Monument and Saguaro National Park are rule followers….CAGR and SAGU. Yeah, sometimes I babble. 😏
It pays to read because also included was this
information, which is how I found out there were two parts to Saguaro:
Saguaro
National Monument was created on March, 1933 by President Herbert Hoover. On October 14, 1994, Congress granted national
park status to Saguaro. The park’s two
districts are separated by the city of Tucson, Arizona and encompass over
91,000 acres. To the west of Tucson lies
the Tucson Mountain District; here, with elevations between 2,180 ft. and 4,687
ft., the saguaro cacti forests are dense and common wildlife include the coyote
and desert tortoise. The Rincon Mountain
District is located on the eastern edge of Tucson and ranges from 2,670 to
8,666 ft. in elevation, providing for increased diversity in flora and
wildlife, including the black bear, Mexican spotted owl and Arizona mountain
king snake.
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In
the road construction project near us there are 4 lone saguaros stabilized with
ropes at the edge of the project. It
would appear that those saguaros do not meet the criteria for removal so
they’re being protected in their current environment. The have padding next to the ‘skin’ of the
cactus with boards propped against the padding.
The entire group is encircled by orange tape strung between sawhorses. All in an effort to protect this awkward and yet
weirdly elegant giant.
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 |
| A small section of the Red River Cattle Co |
Most
of the farming in this area is agricultural…cotton, alfalfa, pecans, etc. On our way to Maricopa we encountered one of
the largest gatherings of cattle I have ever seen…this beats the stockyards we
saw in the Texas panhandle. There had to
be tens of thousands of cows in those pens.
It was the Red River Cattle Co. and I knew from our visit to the John
Wayne Museum last year, that he had a connection with ‘Red River’. It was the name of one of his movies, he
played a cattle rancher and there were actually belt buckles made up with the
Red River brand for his character to wear.
He wore that buckle in several other movies, also. So I briefly wondered if the owners (Tom and Kathy Dugan according to the sign) were John
Wayne fans.😉 I googled Red River Cattle Co and the Dugans to see if I could get an answer to ‘how big is this place?’. I wasn’t able to find numbers but I did find a
2014 blog entry by Rocco Cardinale. This is an excerpt (bold emphasis added by
me):
The number one question I’ve had over the
last two years has been, “There are dairy cows in Arizona?” This is a seemingly
logical question when the sweltering heat and desert landscape are the typical
images that come to mind when most of us picture Arizona. Those were my images
as well, primarily because they are true.
Yes, it’s hot and dry for a good part of the
year in the southwest Arizona county of Pinal, and it’s also the heart of a
robust dairy milkshed. Yes, it feels as if you’re going to accidentally “mosey”
(that will be my only Western movie reference, promise) right onto the movie
set of an old cowboy picture with cacti in the background and the perfect
tumbleweed rolling on by. The John Wayne
vibe is still alive and well, especially in Casa Grande, where the “Duke” spent
a great deal of time. Coincidentally, a
portion of his Red River Ranch is now part of a dairy operation owned by Tom
and Kathy Dugan.
So
there is a connection between the
name and John Wayne. And I really thought
I was looking at a massive beef factory…had no idea it was a dairy farm. Milking all those cows has to be a round the
clock enterprise.
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We finally treated ourselves to a steak at
Frankie’s Chuckwagon, the little restaurant here at camp. It’s a well- known eatery around here and is
open Wednesday through Sunday. The meat
is grilled outside on a huge grill. The waitresses are actually some of the
long term RV residents. I haven’t had a
steak in a very long time…and all 18 oz. of this one was cooked to perfection! Over indulgence is a good term for what
happened tonight. 😕
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Bike miles today: 130
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