With the high cost of gasoline and so few have electric cars families are looking for an affordable family vacation this year. We live 40 miles south of Phoenix and 70 miles north of Tucson in the city of Casa Grande, Arizona. Yesterday on a local TV news station they showed eight different botanical garden related parks in the Phoenix and Tucson; area. Last week they showed a list of a large number of museums located within the Phoenix and Tucson areas.

I live 10 miles east of the city of Casa Grande but it is in the Casa Grande city limits. We live two miles from the Pinal County Fairgrounds and the adjoining auto racing track.The fairgrounds have lots of activities during the year, The Pinal County Fair is held the third week of March each year with a big carnival and all the displays that go with a county fair from animals, paintings, garden plants, quilts, and much more. It was attended this year by a very large number of people. It is like people want to get out after being restricted with COVID-19. The auto races go Thursday thru Sunday from March to September. There is a National Gourd festival held at the fairgrounds in February each year.

Coolidge Arizona is just ten miles from our house and on the north side of Coolidge is the entrance to Casa Grande National Monument. It is open from 9 to 4 every day but Monday. There is no fee and it is an interesting composite of ancient Indian ruins with one very large structure and lots of surrounding adobe ruins that are built like a fort to protect the larger building and it’s occupants. Coolidge is a quaint little town of approximately twelve thousand people. It has a Walmart, MacDonalds, Sonic, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Subway, Safeway, and several good restaurants. Since it is an equal distance compared to our trip to Casa Grande we go there to shop fairly often. Casa Grande is a town of approximately 60,000 people in the winter and up to 100,000 in the Winter with all the “Snowbirds” in the RV parks in Casa Grande. Casa Grande has several business areas but has one primary main street called Florence Avenue. Florence Avenue is about seven miles long in the business area from Interstate 10 to where the Gila Bend Highway begins. Florence Avenue is solid businesses from one end to the other on both sides of Interstate 10.

There are several historical museums in Casa Grande. An electric neon sign display dating back to the 1940’s is on Florence Avenue.

Eight miles south of our home is Sky Dive Arizona near Eloy , Arizona. It is a a large sky diving and hot air balloon facility. In fact the world championship sky diving competition is held at Sky Dive Arizona annually with divers coming from all over the world. There are two large landing areas like football fields located near a large group of buildings that support the sky diving activity. They have a packing shelter where they pack their parachutes. There is a dormitory, restaurant, swimming pool, massage parlor, training rooms to prepare jumpers, staging room where to they sign up to jump and wait to be transported to the plane, military training buildings, and recreational area with a basketball court. The Eloy airport adjoins the sky diving facility. There are over eight planes used for sky diving, six for Sky Dive Arizona and two for the military. Trained repeat jumpers can pay and be scheduled from about nine in the morning if the wind is not an issue that day. The cost for repeat jumpers is about $80 a jump. Tandem jumpers are those that want to be strapped to an experienced jumper for the experience. A three hour training session is required in the training rooms before jumping. it costs about $150 for tandem jumpers. The jumpers are scheduled and announced, when their group is called they load on a trailer with benches and are taken to the plane a short distance away, loaded and taken to an elevation of 5000 feet and then to 14,000 feet. Usually the plane goes to 14,000 feet where the jumpers are dropped. The 5,000 elevation, I understand, is for first time solo jumpers for them to get used to jumping. There are grandstands where observers can come and watch the divers as they dive and come onto the two large grass fields. I go to watch them fairly often. They come in fairly fast. Some do not hit the grassy area and they have a pickup truck and trailer to go get those that miss the target area. It is a great activity.

The point I am making is no matter where you live if you look around their are vacation type activities your family can experience at a small cost. You do not need to spend hundreds of dollars on gasoline and lodging to get to a place that may not be as interesting as places right near your home. Good luck in planning a great close to home family vacation.