Casa Grande, AZ (11/25 - 12/30/24)

After moving south to Casa Grande, we stayed at the Palm Creek Resort for our longest stay at one place since we went full time almost two years ago. Casa Grande is located about an hour from both the Phoenix area and Tucson to the north and south. There wasn't much of a good biking opportunity here, so we made several day trips to ride the great biking trails of Tucson. More about those trails in my next post. We also took in visits to museums, parks, and more hiking trails.

At the Casa Grande National Monument, you can tour the site from which the city was named.

Since we were here for Thanksgiving, we had a visit from our son Kyle and future daughter-in-law Jobi where we burned some calories hiking after our big turkey dinner.

One of the things I was surprised to see was the large amount of cotton fields in the area. We learned that during WWII, when the US couldn't get Egyptian cotton, the US turned to AZ for the perfect area to raise high quality cotton. Many of the POWs were utilized to pick the cotton for the demand of cotton during the war efforts.

Visiting one of the local history museums, we ran across this baby crib that may have been useful when we were raising our sons. Zack was famous for climbing out of his crib to adventure out instead of taking his nap.

One of our first rides in Tucson, we came across these two coyotes just wandering in the wash. Unfortunately they didn't look very healthy. Click here for a short video.

Since we were here for the holidays, we made sure our home was decorated properly for Christmas. That tree was made with some rope and cheap lights.

On one of the hikes we did locally at North Mountain Park, we found what is supposed to be the tallest saguaro cactus in the world.

A great option to see the varied species of the area and to hike was at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum. This was very scenic in a small canyon of the mountains. From here, we now move down to Tucson to complete our winter visit through February.