Jan 13 Holbrook AZ

Home to Arizona

Route from Almonte , to Windsor, St Louis, , Elk City, Holbrook

We have arrived in Arizona. Overall a good trip, a bit of snow for about 1/2 an hour just past Perth, and again between Peterborough and the 401. Our plan was to make our usual overnight stop at Caesars Palace Casino in Windsor, as they have always had free overnight parking and would even offer us a complementary plug in. New rules this year, no overnight parking unless you have a hotel reservation.

Checked out Walmart , but the city has ruled that there is no overnight parking allowed in any of the big retailers spaces. This policy has been adopted by many cities since the last few years and is expanding quickly. The issue is not overnight stays by travelers, but the growing homeless problem throughout North America. People buy an old car or van and move onto public areas and even park on residential streets. In many cases they leave garbage scattered around and it becomes a terrible situation. I understand and agree with the policy, but it just makes it more difficult for travellers looking for a short over night stop.

We stayed overnight at the Flying J truck stop. The next morning when we went to leave my Google maps wouldn't work with the US AT&T sim card  until we crossed into the US, and we had cancelled our Canadian phones as of that day.  Back to the paper maps to get across the bridge.  No issue , just different.

Light snow for the 1st hour, but not serious problem. Great roads until we got to Indiana, their roads are as bad as our Quebec roads.

We overnighted at the Home Depot in Collinsville, just out side of St Louis. It was like coming home as we have probably stayed there half a dozen times. A bit of fog for an hour or so Thursday morning, but not an issue. 

Gas has cost us between 86 cents and $1.05 per liter Canadian .  Oklahoma and Texas are the cheapest as usual.

We left Elk City early the next morning and for about 50 miles before Amarillo until about 50 miles past, no matter what direction you looked and as far as the eye could see in the night sky, it was filled with the flashing red lights from the wind turbines, and this is pretty flat land .  Texas has over 15,000 wind turbines. Texas wind power surpassed nuclear generation in 2014, and coal in 2020. Natural gas is still the largest generator.

We arrived in Holbrook around 3:30 . This is where we de winterize and load up with water each year.

There is a free water tap at the municipal building in the center of town. Another interesting change.

There was a sigh posted that as of Jan 24th 2024 you have to buy a ticket from the city hall to use the water. When we pulled up a guy was filling a 200 gallon tank on a trailer. He inquired if we had filled up there before and we told him this was our annal  stop on the way to Yuma. Turns out he was a city councillor getting water for his horses. A very interesting fellow. When I asked him where I could buy the ticket for the water, he informed me that the offices are only open Monday to Thursday.

I commented that we would be leaving tomorrow morning, and that it was rather unfortunate that we wouldn't have any water. I suggested that I give him some money and since he was a city councillor he could give them the money the next time he was in town. That was a non starter but he left the lock off the tap when he departed on the condition that I relock it and change the combination. We always meet the most interesting and generous people on our travels.

While we were filling with water I noticed that we had a flat tire on the outer right dully. It must have been flat for a few miles as the walls were pretty badly damaged. No tire shops open on a Saturday evening. Future Tire Shop has a stack of truck tires in the window so I think they will be able to help us.. I guess we are here until Monday Morning. Not such a bad plan, as a day off from travelling is a pretty good idea anyway.

January 10 is departure date

 We are leaving for Arizona on Wednesday, hopefully until at least the end of March.

Our US phone number is 315 528 0271. 

Anyone who doesn't have international free call on their phone can just send us a text or email and we will call you back ASAP

Our plan is to post on the blog, pictures and stories of the interesting places that we visit.

March 8 & 9 Silver City New Mexico

New Mexico

We are now traveling in New Mexico. The landscape has changed to more rolling but as always
there are mountains where ever you look in any direction

Silver City

Silver city is another mining town that has had to transform itself into modern day. They have done a pretty good job with an excellent tourist information center. The down town is just art galleries, books stores, and a good variety of antique and collectable shops. They are also the entrance to the Gila Cliff dwellings. They also have an excellent craft Brewer and Distillery called Little Toad Creek.

Around 1875 this area was producing $16,000 of silver bullion a week.

To day this is known as "The Big Ditch", but it was originally the main street of Silver city.
In 1895 flood waters 12 feet high and 300 feet across roared through the heart of the town 
and wiped out the mail street and left a ditch 35 feet deep, in 1903 another food deepened
 the ditch right to the bed rock at 55 feet. The excavation ran for about 15 miles.

This old theater is still operating . A bit hard to see but it has the typical kiosk between the
entrance and the exit to collect the money.

Lots of old buildings like his on the main street.

I want a shirt like this. They cut 2 shirts in half and sewed them back together

We camped in the Gila National forest. These guys were hanging around

Gila Cliff Dwellings

The Mogollon people lived in this region from late 1200 until around 1300.

These dwelling were made up of 4 caves and 40 rooms and they believe numerous

 families resided here at the same time

Hiking up to the dwellings

The entrance to the caves

some of the rooms,

Looking out from the entrance to the dwellings. The drop of is a few hundred feet into the canyon below. A one time this area had to have been under water for the caves to be created .

March 10 Travelling from Silver City to Truth and Consequences

 The trip is about 80 miles , 50 of which were through the mountains. The highway had a speed limit of 25 miles per hour most of the time with the curves at 15 and 20. There were even some at 10 MPH. We were winding our way along the edge of the mountains so most of the time there was a  drop off of 100's of feet into the canyon below. The trip took us almost 3 hours.

That drop off on the right would be a few hundred feet deep.
We don't have good pictures of the Canyon because Rose wound not
 look over the edge to take them.😒

we were at about 6000 feet 

The continental divide goes from Mexico to Canada and goes through this area. The water from this area flows either west to the Pacific Ocean or east to the Atlantic Ocean from this ridge.

 

March 5 -6 Bisbee

 Bisbee AZ is an interesting old copper mining town. At it's peak about 20000 people lived there and today about 5000. It has transformed its self into a tourist ,artsy town with lots of galleries, antique stores and gift shops.  It is built between two mountains in a very deep narrow valley with houses  built on both sides of the valley and layered up the side some times 5 or 6 high. There are 350 sets of stairs and about 30,000 steps scattered through out the town for people to get to their houses. We did the  walking tour of the town that is 7.4 kilometers and includes 1000 steps. It is named the Bisbee 1000.

This is a set of stairs tucked between 2 building on main street leading to houses 

Rose is standing on a landing for the 1st set of houses,
 there are 3 or 4 more levels of houses behind her.

Main street

This guy was enjoying the sunshine at the entrance to an antique shop.

The building originally housed a Woolworths store. The sign is still above the entrance door.

Lots of small houses. 

The open pit copper mine that is now closed

 

March 2 Snowstorm

This is what we woke up to this morning

Our next door neighbor cleaning of his roof. So much effort for nothing.
Poured an extra cup of coffee and it was all gone. 16 degrees by 10 Am

 

Off for our daily walk

This area of the desert is so different from what we are used to. This is like a cactus forest

There were extremely high winds last night and a few cactus go blowen over.
They have a very small root system for such a large Plant

This cactus is turning a pinkish purple.

March 1 Shamrock Farms

 We toured Shamrock farms just south of Phoenix. They milk 10,000 cows on this operation twice a day. Cows are milked for 6 months and are dry for 3 months before giving birth. Calves are kept on a separate area of the farm for 6 months and then the heifers that they are going to keep are are moved to an area of the farm that has all of the dry cows and young stock. Each area hold between 200 and 300 head. These groups are kept together through out their life

Shamrock farms is privately owned by the McClelland Family. The 4th generation has just become part of the management this year. They celebrated 100 years in business last year.

They are a privately owned Fortune 500 company.

Each yard has a covered area about maybe 30 or 40 feet wide. There are sufficient feeding spots spots for all of the cows to eat at once under the roof. My guess would be that the uncovered area would be about 100 feet wide. 

In the summer they drop curtains at the edge of each roof to protect them from the sun, as well
 the large fans mist water into the air, as a result the temperature doesn't rise above 80 even
when the outside temperature is over a hundred.

When the cows are moved to the milking area twice a day, the yards are scaped to remove all of the manure. The manure is taken to an on site unit where the methane is captured and used to generate 
electricity

These barns are built in pairs with a 25 foot feeding aisle down the center where the hay or silage is
dropped. Every cow has a chipped tag around her neck that corresponds to the ear tags. This contains
all of her records. Age, calves, milk production, and medical history.

The milking barn holds 200 cows, 4 rows of 50. Two rows are milked by the same crew of 5 people.

the lead cow walks to the end of the row, turns into her stall and the next one line moves in beside her, with no prodding or coaxing. As they walk down this aisle they are spray washed on the underside to remove any dirt. .

Once they are all in place a person moves down the aisle dipping each teat in an iodine solution, then another person follows, taking one squirt of milk from each teat to make sure the milk is good The next person  wipes of the iodine solution with disposable cloths, one for each cow, and finally another person puts on the milking machine. When the milk stops flowing the milker automatically drops of. If not some one walks down the aisle and removes any that have not dropped off.
About 8 minutes.

  

When the milking is finished, the gates open and the cows move forward  into an aisle that takes the back to their yard. The milking area is the pressure washed down, disinfected and the process start over .
They milk 1 thousand cows per hour ,so about 12 minutes from start to finish. The milking process takes 10 hours each, twice a day with 2 hours between each cycles.

The milk is shipped to their own plant in Phoenix by tanker truck. The cream is separated from the milk, pasteurized and homogenized. The cream is then added back in at 3%, 3.5% or for half and half.
Within 48 hours it is completely packaged and labeled ready for shipping.

The different flavors of ice cream they produce

Flavored milk drinks


They also produce cottage cheese and sour cream.   No regular cheese.