Monday, May 4, 2009

May 4, 2009

Casa Grande

We left Organ Pipe early so we could do our traveling while cooler.  Couple of hours to RV park to stash the carbus and then on to Casa Grande Ruins. 

Interesting.  Other ruins we have seen have been on a hill or in a valley or in a cliff cave.  This is in the middle of a flat desert.  Things were wetter 800-900 years ago.  Also, other ruins have been of stone or based of stone.  This is entirely mud and sticks.  Attempts to preserve it came none too soon.  Much of the village structures have washed away.  The large building is a small part of what was a very large complex.

The Sonoran desert, especially around Organ Pipe Cactus NM has the most variety of plant and animal life of the four great north american deserts.  One plant we have seen a lot of is the ocotillo.  It has long straight VERY thorny branches.  Because they are long and straight they are used for everything from ramada(shade structure) roofs  to fences (natures barbed wire).  The plants way of surviving the desert is to have no leaves unless there is water.  It then sprouts leaves while things are moist and then drops them.  Until today all we had seen were dry sticks.  Today we saw leaves.  The whole desert around Casa Grande  is agriculture  thanks to irrigation from wells (another story). There must have been enough moisture around for the ocotillo to make leaves.  Fun to actually see what we were told happens.

Plant on right in first picture is most common way it is seen.

 

Local fauna.



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