Casa Grande, Arizona

We were surprised how big Casa Grande, Arizona, is. Even has an Olive Garden! HA Manufacturing is huge in this area and it is neat to see the buildings and names and think about what is being made inside. This campground, Encore Fiesta Grande, is really nice. Wide streets, wide sites with parking for truck on the other side of a large concrete pad. The rules are interesting – you have to wear a name badge anytime you are on the grounds and not in your place, even those here long term! I understand because we see this campground is huge and they have trouble with people coming on the grounds to use amenities they don’t pay for. Later in the day, we drove 40 minutes northwest to Maricopa to meet up with my cousin’s daughter and her cute family. They flew in for a wedding. We met at Culvers and ate outside and visited. Very fun. 

After work and nap the next day, we took a drive to see Historic Downtown Casa Grande. Well, it isn’t much, a lot of places boarded up, and there are a lot of homeless people around. I suggested we drive to the other side of the freeway and see what is over there. Big farms and manufacturing, including Stinger that makes bridges and metal stuff. Also saw a dairy. We saw signs to Casa Grande ruins national monument about 15 miles and thought we would check it out. We were there after hours and the gate was closed in front of the entrance. We enjoyed the ride, though. 

One morning Kevin showed me an interesting contrail. It was a big circle. I thought perhaps they had to turn around for an emergency. But he had pulled up the flight tracker app and saw it was parajumpers. That is so cool! I got caught up on a long list of to-dos plus the travel journal. After work Kevin did some maintenance on the truck tires; one tire needed a bit of air. Lug nuts are good and tight. Then we sat outside and read our books for awhile. 

We turned on the A/C for a little while in the afternoon. Ha, it is February! Love it. The temps right now are above normal and might be breaking some records. We like it and low humidity! 🙂 I did a lot of quilting this week. I ran out of thread on top – never had that happen before, so we went to Joann Fabric & Crafts. The company had just announced they are closing all the stores; bankruptcy. Sad. The place had been open an hour by the time we got there and was pretty crowded. No shopping carts available. There was a ton of fabric and right now most is 20% off. I don’t need any but I did find the ruler to square up blocks I wanted. I was so happy to find this last one. The one I have is yellow along the black lines (the signature color for the company) but doing some quilts are hard because you can’t see with those colors. Glad to have this one. I also got a bunch of thread; it was 40% off. Already most of the thread is gone from the shelves. Kevin got some command strips, I think to hang more hats. HA

We had a couple options for what to do today (a Saturday). One was to go to Coolidge town Cotton Days. We first thought this would be a neat way to learn about the cotton grown around here but then we realized it is a town annual festival. We also wanted to go to the historical museum here at Casa Grande. From their website it said it is open Thurs-Sat noon to 4:00 p.m. We got there a few minutes after noon and the gates were deadbolt locked. We tried several gates and the same thing. Maybe the main gate is on the other side. Still locked. Then Kevin suggested we cross the street and see the Casa Grande Neon Sign Park. We thought they displayed it very well. It is outside, with lots of AZ bushes and such, and with a sign for each sign with good and long descriptions. We liked that all the signs were from this town. They have several benches where the back is a tail gate from an old truck – Ford, GMC, Chevrolet, and Dodge Ram. Of course I had to take Kevin’s picture with him sitting at the Ram one. 🙂 Back across the street and still all gates were locked. On their billboard it lists the same days and hours as the website and also has a phone number. Kevin called but only went to voice mail. Disappointing, as from the website, it looks like we could have learned a lot about this area. Oh well. 

One thing really really neat here in Casa Grande is the traffic lights. For the turn left signals, it is a yield signal while traffic goes straight but then when that traffic going straight across gets a red light, the green arrow turns on for left turn. I thought this brilliant!  That gets the turning people out of the middle of the intersection! Way to go, Casa Grande!! I hope to see this everywhere. 

Some RV friends of ours were in Phoenix to buy a Class C motorhome (that is the small ones). They took some time to come see us and we had a great visit. We went out to dinner and then came back and played one round of the game called Trekking. So fun! It is wonderful the friends we have made along our travels. Love it; thankful.