Wintering in Ajo and Why

The Ajo farmer's market happens each Saturday in the town plaza.  Many of the artisans and musicians are local Tohono O'odham Indians.  The white Immaculate Conception cathedral is directly across from the plaza. The town "swells" to about 3500 in the winter season, with many snowbirds fleeing the colder climes for the sunny deserts just north of the border.  We Love this little town, and the eccentric neighboring fork in the road called Why, where we presently live.  

We took a walking tour of the historic Curley School.  The building was abandoned when a new high school was constructed in the 80's, and descended into disrepair.  The locals formed a non profit, gained some grants, and the Curley School is now an artist residence and studio space for about 30 poets, painters, potters, photographers, etc.  Our charming tour guide was raised in Ajo, and graduated from this high school.  She works for the non profit that has plans to restore the plaza theatre and other historical buildings.

View from the second floor of the Curley School, looking towards the cathedral and plaza

Summer at Diana's 2017

It's been interesting getting to know Diana's arabian, Pumpkin.  She's put her nose into many of my handyman projects around the property.  A few weeks ago, I decided to put better latches on the barn door, which holds her food and hay.  She would often nose the door open and help herself, and have to be helped out of the cluttered area.  This day, she watched my work intently.  When she tried the door afterwards, it didn't budge.  I said to myself, "Job well done", and moved on.

The next day I was having a pleasant walk around the yard, and Pumpkin followed me around, "nosing" me into things.  She does that occasionally, but this time she was persistent and annoying.  I thought, what is going on with this horse?  Then it clicked.  The first thing she pushed me into was the newly locked barn door.  Mystery solved.  She had her own opinion about my handyman work.

I've never really gotten to know a horse before, though I've started riding lessons a couple of times.  I didn't feel comfortable with the horse or the instructor either time, and quit them shortly.  Since I've gotten comfortable working around Pumpkin, I decided to have another go at horse riding.  And I wanted to do it bareback and really feel the horse.

Diana treated me like a first time rider, walked us around on a lead, as she has done many times with young children.  She told me to loosen my hips like I was belly dancing and move with the horse.  Perfect instructions.  I settled in quite comfortably.  After walking several times around the pasture, she handed me the lead and we walked and briefly trotted.    It was the nicest horse experience I've had.  Trotting did not feel like popping corn.

After our ride, Pumpkin let off some steam and trotted and cantered around the pasture.  Fun to watch.  I'm going to have to ride her some more next year!!  It was a blast

Last months Lyme medications.  The cure is Almost worse than the disease

Jean has struggled this summer with Lyme disease, which she caught in late spring in a Missouri state park.  Since we were lucky enough to find a lyme doc in Colorado (they are few and far between), our travelling plans were cancelled and we came down to Canon City to stay with our friend, Diana.  That has suited us just fine - an attractive rural setting, fun animals, and a pleasant and undemanding friend as our hostess.

Our front window view.  Pumpkin enjoys the corner fan we put up for her - and my poor sailing kayak is beached

We continued our pruning project this year.  The property has a large variety of mature trees, but many were planted too close,  causing die offs of limbs, and sometimes whole trees.  So we've been cutting out dead wood, thinning and shaping the trees.  It's a fun, artistic process to spot the symmetry and beauty in a tangled, half dead tree.  Creating space and light in a dense overgrowth.

So many nice copses, each dominated by different varieties of trees - ashes, junipers, maples, walnuts.  Diana's brother Pat used dead juniper limbs to create a rustic garden path fence

Pumpkin can graze the front yard now, where it was difficult even for a person to walk, due to low hanging branches

All good things must come to an end, and our summer here is wrapping up.  About a week ago, I had the inspiration to put a new motion light on the back porch, and a new barn dusk to dawn light, so Diana could navigate better coming home in the evenings.  Didn't sound like too bad a job on the list  "Diana porch and barn light".  Uh huh....

While working on the light, I noticed the garage/barn had 220 volts and a 100 amp circuit breaker.  What!?  That's enough juice for a small to medium sized house full of appliances!  So I began tracing the generations of cable hiding behind storage boxes and cobwebs.  And found - 100 Amp hot wires clipped off and hanging loose, open grounds, wiring connected only with tape, fraying insulation...  

I couldn't sleep that night.

The next day I ripped out all of the garage wiring.  And the next 2 long days were spent creating one 20 amp outlet circuit and 15 amp lighting circuit.  Diana will no longer be able to arc weld in her garage, nor hopefully be electrocuted.  It's turned this last week into a bit of a marathon - not my favored pace in retirement.  But today, I finished, and everything works and checks out. 

 Ahhh...  I can sleep again.

My favorite piece of wiring- the stuff of nightmares.  1940s wiring here, I'd guess.  Like in many old farm houses and barns.  220V - 100A (enough juice to weld) -  joined with tape, and one end of the wires hanging loose in the air.  That couldn't be a problem, right?

One half of wiring done with Diana's cleaning help

Other half done, but still slightly cluttered  ;-)

We'll be leaving in a few days for a park in the foothills east of San Diego.  We have a new lyme doc for the fall through spring there, and hopefully this chapter will be behind us.

Colorado Summer

We're loving being back in our home state.  We love the Colorado turf - mountains, plains, streams, forests.  We'll be alternating between Denver at Standley Lake, and Canon City in a friend's rural driveway.  Standley Lake has been hosting goats and their kids for the last couple of years, moving them around to "mow" the grass, and delight adults and their "kids".

Colorado is always our place to do all the yearly stuff, like medical, licenses, etc.  This year, we needed to accomplish some warranty repairs on our new RV - similar in difficulty to passing a health care bill in a partisan congress, I gather.  Anyway we were lucky enough to be able to stay with relatives - Thank you, Andy, Carlos and Lizeth - while our RV home sat in the dealer's lot.  

This was Dolly's first experience in being in any home except the streets, a shelter, and our moving RV home.  We were wondering how she would fare.  

In 15 minutes, she adapted to the new home surroundings, finding the upholstery, carpeting, and furniture to be a better quality than she was used to, and, of course, the new required minimum standard

Within the hour, she discovered the portals to the outdoors, and wanted to romp

.  

By her first half hour outside, she occupied the neighbors garage roof, much to the outrage of a group of magpies, and to her own satisfaction ("pussy urban magpies!")

All of this outdoor bravery ended the next afternoon, when the neighbor lab chased her 20' up their evergreen tree.  All would still have been fine, as she came down and back over to the patio where I was lounging.  But just then, 2 helicopters landed and took off consecutively from the hospital roof 4 houses away.  And if that weren't enough, that outrage was followed by by a dinosaur feeding frenzy in the alley - you know the kind - Beep, Beep, Clank, Clunk, Grind, as they lift car size containers of trash and swallow them whole.  The rest of the week there, she settled for the plusher indoor environment.

Kansas for Quin's graduation

Been behind on blogging due to computer troubles and moving north.  Here are a few shots of our fun time on Lake Jacomo.  Jean and I rented a fishing boat, and accompanied Quin as he learned to use the Hobie kayak.  Fun day, and fun visit afterwards!

Picking up some pretty good wind.  You can see how one outrigger is down in the water and the other up.

Relaxing into it

He really had some good wind here

Keeping a grandfatherly eye on things from our fishing boat.  It was a good, light wind day, with some more moderate winds to make it interesting.  Lots of fun

Ramsey Creek - another possible home in SE Arizona

About an hour and a half east of Patagonia is another lovely eco-niche that appeals to us as a possible long term home.  Ramsey Creek, like Patagonia/Sonoita Creek is another nature preserve in the desert foothills just north of the Mexican border.  In many ways, this canyon feels and looks much like parts of Colorado, though it is happily much warmer in the winter.  :-)

Ramsey Canyon is another one of the very few perennial streams in southern Arizona.  The Nature Conservancy is preserving this fragile and beautiful environment.  Many hummingbirds and sub tropical birds live here

Enormous sycamore trees lined the small creek

One of the original cabins fronted by meadow and Ramsey Creek.  Like so many wetlands that are irreplaceable habitat for birds and wildlife, the creek has been diminished by nearby towns that are drawing down the ground water supply

And right at the beginning of Ramsey Canyon is this 15 unit RV park.  Each RV tucked in it's own private alcove of vegetation.  It's very tempting to us, except that the neighboring town is Sierra Vista, another characterless modern city that looks like it was pooped out of a PlayDoh factory.  Sorry, my prejudices are showing

  

One of the currently vacant RV spaces in this quaint little park

Patagonia - a future home?

As we travel and explore, we're ever mindful of places we might want to settle permanently, or choose for summer or winter homes.  We travelled to Lake Patagonia, just north of Nogales and the border, to have a place in southern Arizona to sail my kayak.  Bodies of water are in short supply in southern Arizona.  We found a lovely lake, perfect size for my sailing kayak, and possibly up to a 15' sailboat, a low mountain terrain, that keeps the summer weather here in the 90's, and still pretty decent weather in winter, good biking, hiking, excellent birding, and a quaint, artsy, small town than strongly appeals to us.  We'll definitely be back.

This is Lake Patagonia, viewed from the peak of Red Mountain.  It is fed by Sonoita Creek, which winds down to the town of Patagonia, and is mostly protected bird sanctuary for the subtropical birds that live and migrate through here.  I'll be posting some of the bird pics in a following blog.  I had a couple of nice sails in the lake in my Bo-nano Boat

Also from the top of Red Mountain (my first "big" hike of the new year - 1600' elevation gain), looking down on the town of Patagonia.  The terrain is a lot like mountainous New Mexico - mesquite, juniper, cat's claw, rolling hills in the 4-5000' elevation range.  Sonoita creek accounts for the green ribbon

Another view of the countryside from Red Mountain - lots of hiking and biking trails, including the major Arizona Trail that the Catholic missionaries travelled.  We boondocked out here, several miles out of Patagonia, and had wild turkeys and a large brown bear for company

A few of the stores on the 2 main commercial streets.  The commercial part of town is 2 streets, about 8 blocks long, if you include the schools.  Next to the Patagonia Market, the brown building is the Velvet Elvis Italian restaraunt, actually a pretty classy place, and it has the 3' x 4" black Velvet Elvis for which it is named

One of several art galleries in town, that also hosts weekend movies.  There's also the Patagonia Opera House and Theatre where music groups come in, and they have community theatre - which Jean and I might both be interested in working with.  It looked like a nice venue, but I failed to get a photo - probably the nicest building in town

The Patagonia Visitors Center is hosted by locals doing 2 hour a week shifts.  We met several fun local residents there.  The former lumber store is now a Pilates studio, which is also in keeping with the town.  There are several health and new agey type retreats in the surrounding burbs and foothills, as well as some nice B&B's

The former railroad depot is now the courthouse and museum.  We met The policeman, and he seemed a nice enough guy.  His office is a mobile home next to the visitor center.

The Gathering Grounds was our favorite place to eat, several vegan and vegetarian options, and they actually knew the difference between the two.  Easy to meet the community here.  I think the feel of this town is somewhere between Guffey, Co, Florence, and a smaller version of Sedona

Amazingly, in a town this size, they have a natural food store with a pretty good selection

The only thing less than ideal here is the RV space.  But the space in the back of this 3 space park could easily be fixed up with bamboo fencing, a new shed, and a cactus garden.  It was very inexpensive, and a 2 block walk to the center of town.  We'll definitely do a month or more here next fall?  spring?

This back space is the one we would take, replace the shed, put in privacy fencing.  Has a nice shade tree.

Finally, a couple of pictures of my hike up Red Mountain, to the Forest lookout station and AT&T antennaes on top

We had thought about being fire watchmen at one point.  Books and nature and no neighbors would have been fine with us, and especially now with the internet.  It was not a bad little setup up there - I peeked in the windows

I've always wanted to climb to an antenae tower.  Jean's brother Kurt may remember a couple of our magical mystery tours attempting to do that in the late 60's - on the Lowry air base air control tower and in the suburbs of Denver following the red blinking lights at night.

Biosphere 2

A mural of the entire original Biosphere 2

A couple of months ago, Jean and I visited Arcosanti - the low tech, passively heated and cooled "arcology" built by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, in the deserts north of Phoenix.  His goal was low impact, high density sustainable communities that would have a minimum impact on the environment, leaving undisturbed countryside for farming and wilderness right at the dense city's edge.

 This week, we visited a very different experiment in human habitation and sustainability- the extremely high tech Biosphere 2, in the Sonoran desert north of Tucson.  What is it about this state?

Biosphere 2 was a privately funded experiment, built in the early 90's, to explore the possibility of creating a closed self sustaining ecosystem to allow human habitation on other planets.  8 crew members, "biospherians",  farmed and maintained the structure for 2 years, in the first experiment. 

 All manner of difficulties were encountered - wildly fluctuating CO2 levels, oxygen depletion, species die offs and population explosions (cockroaches, of course).  They did manage to survive in the closed environment for 2 years - though at one point injecting additional oxygen for the safety of crew members.  

A second closed ecosystem experiment was later attempted, amidst changed ownership (Steve Bannon's investment company!), which lasted for about 8 months and ended with lawsuits and a good deal of ill will.  The property was vacant for a number of years, and then was purchased and run as a scientific ecological experiment by Columbia University from 95-2005.  It became the property of Arizona State University in 2007, and hosts ecological research as well as being a training facility for some of their programs.  The dome is no longer a closed system, but does allow certain sections to be closed off for experimentation with oxygen and CO2 levels, and such.

The large glass structure contained about 8 different ecosystems, from desert, to ocean to tropical rainforest.  You feel the difference in heat and humidity in each environment.  The white tower section in the middle contained the residences and labs.  The white structures behind that are now hosting experiments on the water cycle - ground water, plant use, evaporation and transpiration, rainfall.  The round dome you partly see on the right is one of 2 "lungs" that allowed for air expansion and contraction as the air heated and cooled when this was a closed environment.

A view from the deck overlooking the rainforest, in the large greenhouse.  The plants were selected to top out at 90 feet, as the dome tops out at just over 100'.  These are the original plantings from the 90's

Looking down over the ocean environment.  It is currently being transformed to emulate the nearby Sea of Cortez, between Baja and mainland Mexico.  On the level we were standing were a coastal fog desert habitat and a savannah ecosystem.  The lush bushes you see just past the ocean on the same level are a mangrove forest

The view out through the foggy glass is the rolling plains, canyons and foothills of the Sonoran desert, or Mars, if such a thing ever happens.

Original kitchen with all the best the 90's had to offer

A model of a possible Martian colony

A "Lunar Garden" module.  Hydroponics I presume.  There was also an "aquaponics" experiment being run by a local highschool - a fish farming tank that drained through several layers of vegetable garden, fertilizing and watering them, and filtering the water, which then pumped back up to the tanks cleaned and oxygenated.  

This is one of three angled tray slopes that have been filled with 6 feet of soil, loaded with sensors in the soil and in the closed atmosphere.  Apparently scientists have never had a good understanding of the actual mathematics behind the earths water system - ground water, amounts used and transpired by plants, effects on the atmosphere, rainfall, etc.  These large trays in 3 domes will be planted with different types of landscapes and all of the variables will be measured and studied - something we can't do in an open environment like the Earth.  This sort of information feeds into the climate models scientists use to understand our environmental challenges

Looking at outside of one of the two "lungs" that stabilized the atmospheric pressure as air heated and cooled, expanded and contracted, in the original closed system of the biospheres.  

Standing inside one of the the now unused lungs.  The stainless convex roof you see above would rise and fall by up to 50 feet as the days heated and nights cooled.  Otherwise the glass structures would have exploded or imploded. The black around the edges is a large rubberized membrane that allowed the expansion and contraction.  This interior lung moved within the glass sphere we're looking at in the picture above.

There were acres and miles of piping, refrigeration, heating, water recirculating in the basements beneath the structure.  It also had its own diesel, natural gas, and solar generating stations, though it is cheaper to be grid tied these days.  You'd definitely need some pipefitting and hvac skills to keep a place like this going

And finally a picture of me embracing a wonderful chunk of Arizona malachite.  Behind is the very nice southwestern housing for ASU students and visiting scientists, interns, etc.