It was a good morning for walking...sunny
and warm but not too warm. I walked...Kim picked me up in the truck. We checked the camera. I drove the truck back and Kim walked. Then I walked to meet him. Got a good start on my 10,000 steps.
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The camera was set to video yesterday so
this morning we were able to watch two vultures squabble over the chicken and
the leftover neck bone. Kim said it was
picked clean but apparently they saw it differently. The camera takes 15 second
videos and there were 19 videos on it this morning. Three were of Kim putting out the meat,
fifteen were of the vultures and one was of absolutely
nothing. There is nothing in that 15
seconds to indicate what activated the camera. The word ‘invisible’ is gaining
some traction.
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We decided to bring the camera back to the
game trail...not in the same spot as before though. Thanks to the big hole in the fence Kim was
able to locate a spot farther back in the trail that met his criteria: near an
open area within the protection of the foliage covering the trail and facing
the direction of the culvert. Most important
to me, it seems like it’s an area the vultures won’t venture into due to their
size. We scattered the meat in the open area, made sure the camera was pointing
downward enough and crawled back through the fence hole to wait for
tomorrow.
After lunch we took a bike ride. Made a big loop from here to Sandario Road to AZ 86 which travels through a section of the Tohono O’odham Nation land. Came on back to camp via the usual: IR 15 to Battaglia. Made a quick stop in Eloy and cruised on back to camp. We stopped at the Gu-Atchi Trading Post for some nachos...called it an early supper.
Then I
found several articles that made reference to Quijotoa being a mining town whose
population in 1884 was estimated at over 1,500.
It boasted a newspaper, hotels, stores, a school and a church was in the
planning stage. However, the output of silver
never quite lived up to the hype and mining was mostly finished by 1886. It is now considered a ghost town. Found this on ghosttowns.com:
Quijotoa's post office was established December 11, 1883 and
discontinued August 31, 1942. Discovered in 1883 by Alexander McKay, the mine
responsible for Quijotoa was not all it was played up to be. Several thousand
people flocked to the town but only a few years later it was deserted. There
were over 20 saloons yet no jail. Lawbreakers were tied to a tree and shipped
off the next morning to Tucson. A fire destroyed much of the town in 1889 and
today, nothing remains.
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The reconstruction of I-10 in this area was
completed close to two years ago.
However, when we arrived this year I noticed a new addition to the area...something
that looks like a soccer ball on a stick has been built near the intersection
of eastbound Exit 211 and AZ 87. Nothing to
indicate what it might be or what its purpose is. Then about 3 days ago an article popped up
on my Google news feed showing a picture of the ‘soccer ball’ along with a
report about the dust detection system winning an engineering award. Suddenly I had some information with which to
do a Google search. Found a July 2020 article by Shaq Davis on the website Tuscon.com:
Road Runner: Arizona turn on dust detection system on I-10 between Tucson and Phoenix
Arizona’s $6.5 million answer to combating
dangerous dust storms on a section of Interstate 10 is now operational after a
month long trial, state Department of Transportation officials say.
A dust detection system now lines 10 miles of
interstate between Picacho Peak and Eloy — mileposts 209 to 219. This is an
area with a history of being prone to dust storms caused by strong winds.
In its wake are serious vehicle crashes and
hours long shutdowns of the busy section of highway between Tucson and Phoenix.
“We’ve been working for a number of years to
explore technologies that will give us quick and reliable warnings about
incoming dust storms, as well as dust storms that are reducing visibility so
that we can get out warnings to drivers in real time, said Garin Groff, an ADOT
spokesman. “This is the first system to our knowledge, anywhere, that has done
that.”
It’s operational in time for the monsoon season,
which officially started last Monday.
Motorists entering the corridor will see the
overhead electronic message boards alerting them to blowing dust and to slow
down.
These are regularly seen along the interstate
providing notices for road hazard locations to Amber Alerts.
Multiple programmable speed limit signs are
placed every 1,000 feet near the corridor’s entrance and can shift between 75
mph to 35 mph depending on the situation. Additional signs are placed 2 miles
apart.
Drivers will likely spot the weather radar
system on a 20-foot tower at I-10 and Arizona 87. This provides 40 miles of
coverage to help the National Weather Service keep track of what’s happening in
the area.
Behind the scenes, 13 sensors mounted on
posts along I-10 use light beams to determine the density of dust particles in
the air. The system activates the message boards and the variable speed limit
signs once visibility drops to certain levels, ADOT said.
ADOT’s Traffic Operations Center in Phoenix
is the central monitoring location using closed-circuit cameras to identify
conditions along the roadway and potentially more storms in the distance.
With the cameras, ADOT staff can also monitor
the conditions related to the speed and flow of traffic.
This will help as state officials anticipate
more motorists using the freeway between Phoenix and Tucson in the future.
“In the last year we went from four to six
lanes right in this I-10, Eloy area where a portion of the dust detection and
warning system is. We also expanded another four to six lanes near Casa Grande.
Now it is six lanes all the way from Tucson to north of Casa Grande where the
Gila River Indian Community starts,” Groff said.
The hope within ADOT is to prove if similar
technologies could be of use along the various state highways.
“It’s certainly a big deal for us to deploy
this technology and have something that can give drivers this real-time
information so they can get through the area more safely during dust storms.”
They’ll first use this pilot program to iron
out any problems with the real-time operations of the system, according to
Groff.
“There’s been a lot of effort to develop the
software, so all of this works automatically and reliably but there is a
learning curve, so we’ve been monitoring this very closely,” Groff said.
While
it’s technically a weather radar system according to this article, I will
always think of it as a soccer ball on a stick.
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Today’s bike miles: 186
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