We all survived our sleeping arrangements. Kim and I slept on a 24” high air mattress us and Mom slept in our bed with a make-believe pillow. Set-up and take-down of the entire air mattress arrangement went smoothly…the living area was back to normal before Mom got back from her shower.
We changed the position of the table; instead of having the table perpendicular to the back ramp, we turned it so it’s parallel to it and pushed it up against a wall. That allows for one chair on each side and one on the end with plenty of room to walk around it. Plenty of room to have two chairs on one side also. This setup seems to better accommodate three people.
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Warm enough outside today for Mom to sit and enjoy the bird show we have going on during daylight hours. At one point, there were at least 10 hummers competing for the perfect spot on the feeders. Haven’t seen the Hooded Oriole for a couple of days or the cardinals either, for that matter. Plenty of hummers and sparrows, though, to entertain our guest. 😎
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The Regal Horned Lizard came skittering into the yard to surprise all of us. It came from the back corner of the camper which makes me more certain that it’s taken refuge in the small pile of wood laying in that area. Although it seems to like being underneath the camper also. It blends with the dirt so well that every time I look for it under there, I don’t see it.
Mom was surprised by how small it was…thought from the pictures that it was much bigger. Unless there’s something nearby for size perspective, pictures don’t always tell the size story. And this little lizard is too wary and too fast for us to be able to lay a quarter beside it for size comparison.
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After lunch, we visited the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in Coolidge. When Mom was out here in 2020, the Ruins was closed due to the emergence of COVID-19. And neither of us know why we didn’t go in either 2022 or 2023…we just didn’t. We’ve been talking about various things we could do in the next couple of days. Some require a bit of walking, but since she’d had a chiropractor adjustment just before coming out here, Mom declared she was ready to do some walking. The Casa Grande Ruins was a good place to start.
Personally, the ruins themselves don’t do much for me; it’s the stories of the Ancestral People of the Sonoran Desert that built the settlement that intrigue me. It’s estimated that they inhabited the area from the early 13th century to the mid-1400s. They engineered and built canals to divert water from the Gila and Salt Rivers to sustain their farming. They built compounds which consisted of meeting areas, pithouses (homes) and ball courts where games may have been played. The buildings had 4-foot-thick walls made with a compound called ‘caliche’, a concrete-like substance made with sand, clay and limestone. It’s estimated that it took 3,000 tons of caliche to build just the Great House alone. All of this was accomplished without benefit of modern power tools, wheels, beasts of burden (horse, donkey, or oxen) or any type of support frame.
*The walls face the North-East-South-West points on a compass.
*A circular hole in the upper west wall aligns with the setting sun at the summer solstice.
*Other openings align with the sun and moon 00pmat specific times of the year.
There is very little known about the Ancestral People, including what they called themselves. However, there are six tribes in the Southwest region that can link their histories to the ancient people who once lived here.
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We bought another TV for the camper. Earlier in March, I talked Kim into getting a 24” TV which I thought would be plenty big given how rarely we’ve watched TV in the camper. He was very dissatisfied with the size of the screen once it was mounted in place; there was nothing to do but buy a 32" TV. The other one will be used as a monitor for Kim’s desk computer at home.
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Went to Hot Dogs Alvarado for supper tonight. Mom has been waiting since last year to sink her teeth into one of these gastronomical delights. I look forward to the Piggy cookies when we head to Arizona; Mom looks forward to a Sonoran hot dog.
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Too cloudy once again for imaging so we sat in the camper and watched nature shows featuring David Attenborough.
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