For the past ten days Sara and I have been living in an RV resort in Casa Grande, a city approximately half way between Phoenix and Tucson, AZ. We were leaving Las Vegas when the news came that we had received a serious offer on the sale of our home south of Madison. We were advised to get to a place with Internet connections and a fax machine and the Shadow Ridge RV Park fit the bill. We went through several days of offers and counter offers and we now have a signed final offer with a planned closing on March 31. While in the Casa Grande area, we did some local exploring. The city is named after an ancient set of ruins north east of the actual community which is, as most cities in the Valley, experiencing tremendous residential growth. Over 3,500 new homes were started this past year in a city of 25,224. Sara and I drove out to see the Casa Grande ruins and to hear the story of the ancient ones; the Akimel O'otham called the Hohokam or "those who are gone."

For over a thousand years, prehistoric farmers inhabited much of the present-day state of Arizona. When the first Europeans arrived, all that remained of this ancient culture were the ruins of villages, irrigation canals and various artifacts. Among these ruins is the Casa Grande, or "Big House," one of the largest and most mysterious prehistoric structures ever built in North America. The Casa Grande Ruins, the nation's first archeological preserve and a National Parks Monument protects “the big house” and other archeological sites within its boundaries.

The Hohokam (ho-ho-cam) Indians of the Pima group built the Casa Grande settlement in approximately 2000-3000 BC. This was a farming culture growing plants including cotton and tepary beans, sieva and jack beans, green-striped cushaw squash, warty squash, and pigweed. According to the displays at the Park museum, the Hohokam also augmented their food with wild plants such as goosefoot seeds, saguaro fruit and seeds, carpetweed seeds, grass seeds, prickly pear cactus fruit and pods, mustard seeds, wild primrose roots, four-o'clock roots, cholla buds, cattail roots and catkins, cocklebur, and coyote melon. They hunted animals such as jackrabbits, cottontails, and mule deer. How is that for a menu?

In their everyday life, the early Hohokam used stone like implements to grind seeds into coarse meal for cooking. Cooking was accomplished in plain brown pottery. This same pottery supplied storage vessels and containers for the cremated remains of the dead. These Pioneer period people had ceremonies as attested to by fired clay human and animal figures and the use of incense burners. Some basic regional trade occurred, especially to obtain shells from the Gulf of California which were used to fashion jewelry.

This was and still is a harsh desert environment with usually less than 8 inches of rain per year. As Sara and I toured the ruins, we marveled at how these people were able to live and farm here. The secret was a system of irrigation canals that stretched for 18 miles from the Gila River south to the compound.

There were no trees in the area and the Hohokam built their homes by digging up caliche which is hard pan clay and mixing it with water to form a primitive type of cement. Bucket by bucket they built walls surrounding the compound, the pit houses and the Casa Grande in the center. These courtyard segments became the basic unit of village life. At Casa Grande Ruins National Monument the central district had sported the ball court and community plaza. The most amazing structure is the 35 ft high Casa Grande. When one realizes that this building was constructed without a foundation or superstructure, this feat is incredible. We were told that holes were placed at particular locations in the walls so that as the sun passed across the sky, a ray of sunlight moved across the interior walls to mark the day, week and month of the year.

The decline and finally the abandonment of the settlement were probably caused by the very canals that supplied the precious water. Archeologists believe that a series of severe floods deepened the channel of the Gila River to the point that intake canals were too high to bring in water. This was followed by years of drought that forced the Hohokam to leave the area sometime between 1330 and 1450. The native peoples scattered across southern AZ and are the ancestors of the Pima tribes that still live in the area.

Speaking of housing, Sara and I are slowly coming to the realization that our little “Casa Grande” in Oregon, WI will soon not be our home. After living in the same house for over 28 years it is not easy to give up a beautiful home, a sauna and spa, an orchard, garden and those beautiful western sunsets. Ones home represent a place of comfort and retreat and soon it will be gone. But its loss also means the freedom to travel for us and there will be beautiful sunsets at Acadia National Park off the coast of Maine, over the cliffs of New Foundland, over the waters of Thousand Islands Park in upstate New York, against the peaks of the Tetons and Glacier National Park, dipping below the horizon at Vancouver Island and shimmering on the blue waters of the Baja Peninsula. These are just a few of the places we are planning to visit in the next few years. And our current home, Casa Minu’scula en las ruedas or “tiny house on wheels” while not for everyone, seems to fit us well. What other place can Sara clean in 20 minutes and we move at 65 MPH if we don’t like our view out the front window?

As great a loss as our house is, we will miss our friends and neighbors in the Madison area even more. We plan to visit often. Our older daughter Amy is still living in Madison and we will visit the Twin Cities to see Polly. The internet allows us to stay in contact with many, and we recently equipped the RV with a new dish satellite system for TV. 225 channels with HBO and Cinemax somehow seems obscene, but Sara and I got tired of watching “snow” on TV for the past two months in AZ. And now we can watch all those Badger and Packer games no matter where we are.

Sara and I are planning to go to the Phoenix Renaissance Festival tomorrow which covers 35 acres,
with over 25 venues and 500 costumed celebrants. We will then move to the Big Bend National Park on the banks of the Rio Grande in southwest Texas. We plan a raft trip down the narrows if there is any water in the “big river”. We are told there will be enough.

On the road with Sara and Don………………………

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