Echoes of the Southwest

Almost all the homes were deserted on this one street in the town of Miami. the fixer-upper the cottage the town's realtor the mansion the tire house The cactus on the left has my dirty mind racing, lol. My future home.  You are all welcome to visit, just give me time to clean the place.

This is an unusual event to occur in AZ, a very foggy morning.  I was driving to my Mother's house and could only see a half a block ahead of me.  It made the drive creepy.  I saw those movies about the fog and know that there could be creatures hiding in the mist.  I kept my guard up and made sure that nothing was going to get me while driving in the fog..... muhahaha!!!

These factories are no longer working the mines.  They are left abandoned and deserted by the closure of the mines and the departure of residence that have left to find work elsewhere.  Now all that is running through the vacant halls is the spirits of those who used to work there. The first two photos were taken in Superior, AZ The photos below were all taken in Miami, AZ

After the abandoned train, we cruised around Miami and then Superior but had no luck looking for the right place to add to our book.  We did find some cool houses but they looked dangerous and were fenced in.  We also saw some great empty and forgotten factories that were booming in the town's heyday.  But they had fences around with big signs that said words like, "hefty fines" and "arrested".  We can deal with a simple "no trespassing" sign but when they threaten our bank accounts and freedom that is when we decided to pass on the place because it wasn't worth the hassle.  I did get some great outside shots and will post them later. As we headed back home, Sharon said that the one trailer in the abandoned trailer park where she found the wood divider had a good feeling.  We decided that place would be perfect for a chapter in our book. This was the main trailer across from the playground that was used for another chapter and next to Barry...

One of my favorite shows in the late 1960’s was “Land of the Giants”. The show premise was set in the then-future of 1983 when a small group of Earth people landed on a strange planet when their spaceship runs into a mysterious storm that throws them off course. They land on a planet where the people are twelve times larger than those on Earth. Basically the giants are about 72 feet tall with all objects built to the gigantic scale. They spend the next two seasons (that is all the show lasted), trying to avoid the giants and get their spaceship back to earth. Do giants exist on Earth? Here is an explanation given by Wikipedia: “The mythology and legends of many different cultures include monsters of human appearance but prodigious size and strength. "Giant" is the English word (coined 1297) commonly used for such beings, derived from one of the most famed examples: the gigantic of Greek mythology. In various Indo-European mythologies, gigantic peoples are featured as ...

After we roam around the state looking for abandoned places in the desert, we will be in search of abandoned places in various cities.  Look for future posts of our antics in Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott, and Flagstaff.  It should be fun.....

In the 1900, sugar beets were a profitable product in many states around the country. One person who took note of this was businessman W. J. Murphy, who was the founder of the Arizona Improvement Company for water and land development. Glendale was one of the many growing agricultural communities connected to a canal and irrigation system, which makes it a great location for a sugar beet factory. Since the early 1880’s, sugar beet factories were built in many states with the desire of changing sugar beets into granulated sugar. Murphy pushed for a large factory to be built in Glendale after successful experiments proved that sugar beets can be manufactured in the Salt River Valley. In the summer of 1903, construction began on the Sugar Beet Factory just on mile east of Glendale’s business district. But by December, construction had to be temporarily stopped because of financial woes leaving only the steel frame standing. By 1906 with construction resuming, the huge factory was ...

Since we had a guest traveler with us, Vinnie, Sharon thought he might want to see the Domes in person.  Even though they say there are "No Trespassing" signs posted, we did not see them.  We were just there to take pictures and admire the uniqueness of the structures. Unlike the vagrants and party peeps, we were not out to destroy the place.  Besides, Mother Nature has done a good job of it all by herself. It had only been a month since Sharon and I visited the Domes, but within that time the cruel and harsh weather that went through our state played havoc on the Dome's structures.  The walls and ceilings of each building had more holes especially the last building.  There were huge chunks of the ceiling lying on the floor where there was none before.  The walls that had various cracks where the sunshine poured in, and there were now holes that we could walk right through.  We don't think that last structure is going to last much ...