Yuco Cotton Gin Jan 16

This Cotton Gin is about 5 kilometers from where we are camped so we walked over for a look around

Arizona grows about 5% of the the cotton grown in the US. The yields in Arizona are about twice the national average. Yuma county which supplies his cotton gin grows about  13000 acres annually. It is planted  in February and harvested in September.  Cotton in Arizona yields about 1200 lbs per acre.

At the cotton gin the seeds are removed from the raw cotton picked in the fields. The seeds are sold as animal feed or used to replant. The cotton is then shipped to the spinners, that make the yarn . The yarn is then woven into cloth. 

Yuco cotton gin facility. It is closed now for the season

This is what the cotton looks like when it arrives at the facility. These cotton balls had been blown by the wind up against the fence

Each of these bales weigh 480 lbs. This was the area where the bales were stored before being shipped out

A stock photo of cotton in the field that has not been picked yet.

 

The piles in the background between the 2 buildings are the lint, this is what is left over when they separate the seeds from the cotton. The lint is loaded into large dump trailers and taken somewhere to have the seeds separated from the lint . About 5% of the seeds are are used to replant and the rest becomes animal feed. We have been unable to find out if the lint is used for any thing. It seems to me that it could be used.

The lint that has the seeds in it

The end of another perfect day

The full moon just above the horizon.

Phoenix to Yuma Jan 14

Phoenix to Yuma

Dairy Farming in Arizona

It is hard to see the details of the dairy barns but there is row upon row maybe up to 50 barns 

This is a stock photo of what the barns would look like . These farms have about 10,000 milk cows, and around 17000 young stock.  These farms have their own dairy to process and sell the milk and milk products.  It seems that some of these corporations own similar operations in Wisconsin. We passed at least 1/2 dozen of these operations.  All of the feed for these animals is grown on irrigated land, most of the water comes from the Colorado river , and some from wells drilled about 1/2 mile deep. 

This creates a lot of controversy as when wells are drilled that deep it depletes the water from the shallow wells so local residents run out of water. Residents cannot afford to drill wells 2500 feet deep.

Dateland

A couple from Calgary own this very popular stop along highway # 8.  It is most famous for their date shakes as well as everything else dates.

The last time we stopped here we walked around the date grove and were able to pick fallen dates from the ground. This year there doesn't seem to be any on the trees or on the ground. Not sure what is going on.

Delicious medjool dates, $10.75 US a lb

Solar Farms 

There are a lot of solar farms in Arizona , which makes perfect sense since there is sunshine here almost 365 days a year. What was interesting is that these panels are trough shaped

Parabolic Solar panels

For a full description of how it works click on this link       Parabolic solar panel description 

Pima Mountain Trail Jan 13

Pima Mountain Trail

It was sunny and 23 degrees, so a perfect day for a hike. We did the Pima mountain trail which gives  you  a view of Phoenix. There are trails all over this area, we only did 5 kilometers but there is probably close to 100 kilometers of trail in this area.

The buildings appear  much closer that they actually are as I zoomed  in a lot

The air pollution is quite high here. You can see the haze in the air.

There are about 200 golf courses in the Phoenix area.

The area also has a lot of mountain bike trails as well

Phoenix Jan 12

 

The day started with breakfast at Waffle House. Top of Rose's to do list on every trip south.

We picked some oranges of a tree in the shopping center parking lot.  There are orange, and grapefruit trees planted all over through out the city.

We took the advantage of being in a big city and paid a visit, Best Buy, AT&T, CVS , Walgreens, Camping World, and Costco.

Rose need to replenish her potassium pills and we have been stopping at drug stores all along the way. Every one is sold out. We finally found them at CVS.

In Phoenix there is a large percentage of the people who are wearing masks. Up until now it was mostly the employees of the large corporations. Now it is is almost 100 percent of the employees, maybe 1/2 of the customers. You cannot get on a city bus with out a mask. The one interesting exception to the rule was camping world. No employees wearing masks. 

Not sure of the reason, but empty shelves were quite noticeable. Even at Walmart.  Not sure if it is logistics or staff. I overheard a conversation in a Walmart that they were trying to get staff from another store to solve the backlog on freight, so maybe it is staff shortages.

Lower Cliff Dwellings Jan 11

We went to visit the lower cliff dwelling in Tonto National Forest near Roosevelt Arizona

 The Salado Indians built these cave dwelling around 1300. There were 20 rooms and housed approximately 40 people. The dwelling is 40 feet high, 85 feet long, and 48 feet deep. Each family occupied one room with a fire pit and a hatchway to access the second floor. The 2nd floor was constructed of local timber, and then covered with a latus , then finished with a clay mortar. 

The caves opening faces south east, so in the winter it would receive the heat from the sun , but in the summer would avoid the heat in the afternoon.

Some of the mortar walls are still intact. The cliff overhang prevented an rainfall from entering the living area.

The holes in the walls about 6 feet up would have supported the beams for the 2nd floor. The larger opening at the bottom was the entrance to the rooms. There were no doors

Interior cave walls

The wooden structure shows how the second floor would have been constructed.

The hike was 1/2 mile up and a 350 foot elevation. 
That is our gypsy wagon in the parking lot at the bottom

Overlooking Roosevelt Lake which is 24 miles long

It was 17 degrees, just a beautiful day to hike. Today was the first time this year that we have seen any desert flowers in bloom

A cactus of this type can grow up to 50 feet in height

 and live from 75 to 200 years

After our hike we dropped in for a visit with Pierre and Chantal Hince in Mesa, part of Phoenix.

Pierre and his guitar instructor   LOL

Show Low to Globe Jan 10

 

We took these pictures along the drive from Show Low to Globe.  

At this point there was plenty of green forest

Some very spectacular scenery going through the mountains

Miles of hair pin turns , some times at only 25 or 35 mile per hour speed limits

Show Low is 6345 feet above sea level. Globe is 3510. 

Petrified Forest Jan 9

 How wood gets petrified

Petrified wood is created when a living tree falls into a stream, it gets caught and gets buried under sand and mud . Through time it gets buried deeper and deeper under the mud. It gets cut of from oxygen and ceases rotting. Silica in the ground water infiltrates the wood and through a chemical reaction replaces the organic mater with quartz crystals and minerals. The log is petrified. Subsequent erosion of the surrounding rock re-exposes the petrified log.  Continued erosion undercuts the log causing it to crack into segments . This wood is thousands of years old.

This area was once semi arid grassland and forest, during the Triassic period. At that time it was approximately 10 degrees north of the equator, near present day Costa Rico. As the super continent Pangea broke apart it drifted north . Some 218 million years later, this area is at 35 degrees north latitude. The Colorado plateau lifted slowly over millions of years raising this park to almost one mile above sea level. That is why the park is arid today.

There is a cabin that has been reconstructed from Petrified wood in the park and we were in need of a good hike as we have been lacking exercise in the last week . It was much simpler than I expected but it was just to show what kind of buildings had been constructed in that time period.
The window was put in the reconstructed building so visitors could see inside

There were no doors in these buildings, only openings from the top. A ladder was used to climb up on the out side and another to come down into the building.

Based upon the archeological digs the house would have been of the design in the picture and built between between 1050 and 1300 . A thousand years ago.

Some pictures of the petrified wood and logs along our hike

over he thousands of years , after the logs have become petrified , and turned to stone rather than wood, the pressure from the all the layers of earth above them breaks them into pieces. Wind and water over the centuries has uncovered them again.

The colors are created by the different minerals that got absorbed into the wood.

Theses pieces are taken and cut into slices and polished to make beautiful table tops etc.

This log was over 100 feet long

A typical scene 

a close up shot from the picture above