Somewhere in the middle of nowhere

Nov. 9

I will start by backing up a bit to show a few pictures that I took yesterday on the way to our fabulous campground.

Coming down Highway 10 after leaving Wilcox, Arizona, we came upon huge piles of rock.

We stopped at a rest stop to get some pictures and I snapped this warning sign.





Sign at Rest Stop

I was on full alert! Snakes and scorpions are not my favorite critters.



 

 

 

 

 

Soon after, we found our campground right off of Highway 10 outside the town of Bowie. We are parked right next to this giant cactus.

 

 

While talking to Bruce (the owner of the campground) and a local fellow who was coming through the campground, I learned a lot about the history of this area.

Apparently, this was a thriving community until the '70's. It was an active farming community where they grew cotton and maize. The town had several motels, hotels, restaurants, bars, and even a movie theatre. Then they started having a lot of problems getting water. Nothing grows here without irrigation. The fellow told me that you have to dig down 1,000 feet to get water and it often comes out of the ground hot. Due to the water problems the farmers started leaving the farms and the town started to slowly die. We took a bike ride into the town today to check it out. There are a couple of small stores: a liquor store and a corner store.

This is Anna, biking down main street.

 

Although there were  many abandoned buildings in the town, there were some impressive looking schools.  The one below is just one of many.

 

 

 

 

Have you ever seen a house like this one?  

 

 

The yards are decorated with Cactus.

 

The bike ride into town was great but the bike ride  home was quite a workout as we had to bike against a very strong wind. It was very chilly here today, only 8C this morning and even though it warmed up the wind was very cold all day. It was nice to have a relaxing day though and get caught up on a few things. Tomorrow we shall hit the road again.