5/22-23/2014 – On the way back to Tucson, I visited with an old family friend in Chandler. Just south of chandler, in Coolidge, I made a quick trip to the casa Grande Ruins. Casa Grande is another walled Hohokam village, with a four story big house, unlike and much later in history than the village at Romero. There is evidence here of irrigating the desert as early as 800 AD with the compound inhabited until the 14th century, much later than those in the Four Corners area. The village started as pit houses but eventually built up with a type of cement mud called caliche. As with other sites, timbers were carried in for use at the big house from miles away. The site is preserved by a large open sided metal ramada over the big house and reapplication of caliche on the rest of the village.
So the Ford dealer made a diagnosis that the noise in my Escape was coming from the transfer case. The part was ordered and I was told it would be ready on Friday. When the phone rang on Friday morning, I was ready to go pick up my vehicle and take off. But no-the phone call was to tell me the noise didn’t disappear with the old transfer case. Now they thought it was in the transmission-my thought all along-and it wouldn’t be ready until next week. God Bless America!
It was time for a city hike. The temps were in the 80’s and I wanted to explore. I walked into downtown Tucson to look around. I found a neat old courthouse (1928), some old buildings, and a couple of interesting monuments. In the years of Tucson’s developments, the Spanish Presidio, the first cathedral, and many of the historic hotels have been torn down. The city has a statue of Pancho Villa and a monument to the Mormon Battalion, a group of LDS volunteers who marched from Council Bluffs Iowa to San Diego during the Mexican War and who stopped in Tucson for rest and resupply. I thought it an odd contrast-one who raided the US at Columbus NM and one who volunteered to fight for a country they were trying to leave (Utah was Mexican Territory). On the way back, I diverted to the Arizona Historical Society’s Museum and got another free veterans’ admission. They had an interesting display on copper mining, but told mostly stories of Tucson (not Arizona). The neatest thing was the building, with an architectural feature saved from the old cathedral.
Leaving again tomorrow to stay with family in Vegas until I can Escape Tucson again. Maybe I can get a free birthday lunch along the way.
