Hifalutin Cactus Beauty

Yesterday, Sunday, our friends Jo and Larry drove to Tucson from their RV park in Casa Grande. The object of the visit was to eat, drink, and be merry, so we set to work as soon as they arrived! Tucson has a reported 170 Mexican restaurants within it's 500 square mile city limit, and we've been trying to get to them all this month. Sundays pick for lunch was the original location of Mariscos Chihuahua. There are several locations of this restaurant now, but we chose the original to get some of the ambiance reported in the review columns.

Mariscos Chihuahua, as the name suggests, specializes in Mexican seafood dishes. One of the dishes most favored by us was the shrimp in garlic. Almost a scampi, with lots of garlic and huge shrimp in drawn butter with rice and a lettuce salad was more than could be eaten at one sitting. A dish advertised to be very spicy was the Shrimp Endiabladas. A dozen or more large shrimp in a special red chili sauce, with rice and salad were delicious, but only mildly spicy! I was glad that there was some Habanero sauce on the table!

After lunch we drove to Saguaro National Park West, where we drove the Bajada Loop Trail, a mostly gravel road through a huge variety of cactus in the height of bloom. The park is a tremendous area for Saguaro, Cholla, and Ocotillo cactus.

Ocotillo, with Saguaro in the background:

Cholla, two varieties:

And a miniature barrel cactus group tucked in under a Cholla:

Jo and Donna walked out into the desert to photograph a particularly beautiful yellow cactus flower, but when they heard a rattling in the bushes, they exited the area. Quickly. Stage Right. No pic, but at least Jo seemed to enjoy the experience!

It's hard to see, but the Saguaro effectively cover the hills. Some are tall, some are short, but it's awesome to see them all.

Today, Monday, after a morning walk with Sasha, it was off to the tire shop to investigate what appeared to be a nail in one of Gus's tires. Turned out to be a large but short legged staple that was removed with no damage. Then a trip to the carwash after yesterdays off road trip. There are almost as many car washes in Tucson as there are Mexican restaurants, so the competition if fierce. Today I visited the Octopus Carwash on Valencia Rd, just a couple of miles from home and received excellent service on a hand dry $3.00 carwash! Exterior only, of course, but what a deal! Gus is shining like new again!

Our mission this afternoon was to visit the Hifalutin Steakhouse with Ted and Phyllis.

Done in a cowboy motif, with the servers wearing Wranglers and Cowboy hats, it was a great place to eat.  As soon as you walk in, the smell of woodsmoke and well oiled leather takes you to the old west. The furniture is all made of leather and wood, and the food was delicious. A steak, beef stroganoff, Mexican shrimp and Chicken Tortellini was more than we could eat. See a pattern here?

After lunch, we enjoyed coffee and dessert with Ted and Phyllis at their very nice Newmar Kountry Star motorhome. The weather was wonderful, so we sat outside until well after dark.

This will be the last time this trip that we get to spend some quality time with them, but we will be in touch as we all travel around our great country!

MishMash

After our Street Fair excursion of last Sunday, this week has been pretty tame.  On Monday, Todd and Renee of RV Sunshade Company came by and made a set of custom wheel covers for Nessie.  The sun is known to deteriorate the rubber compounds in the tires, and we don't want to lose a tire at 65-70 mph on the Interstate! These covers are nicely finished and bound, and have a lifetime warranty.  Thanks, Todd and Renee!

Tuesday started off with a bang when we had Arizona Palm Tinting add a slight tint to Gus's front windows.  The temps have begun to rise and the 85-90 degree heat is taking it's toll.  The building housing the tinting company is rather unique in that behind the tagger front is a building that barely survived the Pancho Villa's incursion into US Territory!  It has definitely seen a better day, and isn't in the best part of town, but kudos for doing an excellent job for a very reasonable price!

These Arizona sunsets are getting a bit boring! Once again we have a wonderful evening on the patio watching the day end with acquaintances from the park!

Wednesday we enjoyed the company of our friends Ted and Phyllis for "Lundin". We arrived at the Silver Saddle Steakhouse at about 2:30 and proceeded to demolish three plates of Prime Rib and a 10 oz Top Sirloin.  With all the fix in's, don't you know. There aren't any pics of the dinner because we were all too busy eating! Later in the afternoon, over dessert and coffee, we all of a sudden saw that the time had escaped once again, so at 9:30 we wrapped it up and hit the hay.

I have been wanting to explore more of Tucson's excellent bicycle path system, so on Thursday, our Michigan friends, Dale and Lisa, joined us in the morning for a bit of exercise. Donna and Lisa took Sasha for a long walk, and Dale and I took a bike ride.  Just short of twenty miles later, my legs were talking to me, and it was becoming obvious to all that Dales' 12 year age advantage was doing him right well.  We made it, though, and enjoyed the afternoon with them, calming down after the strenuous activity. In the evening, Rincon West provided an evening program featuring two identical twin brothers in an act called Spittin' Image. These guys have been doing this routine for 30 odd years, and they have it down pat! An evening of music that catered to the demographic (55+), (sometimes a lot +), and comedy kept us entertained for several hours. Great fun!

On Friday, Jorge and Alejandro got here about 10 am to wash and wax Nessie. As we talked, Jorge told me that they didn't have much to do, so "for a few dollars more" they washed and waxed Gus as well. A fine job, if I do say so myself, but they drew the line at waxing the bicycles…..  In the afternoon we completed an online drivers safety program for "seniors". It was only a four hour class, but it took us six plus to complete! I guess we really are slowing down!

In the evening we went with Dale and Lisa to the Tucson Greyhound Park. Regardless of your opinion of how these thoroughbreds are treated, it is an amazing sight to see a seventy pound animal accelerate from a standing start to 45 mph in three strides! The track is in a shady part of town, and is a bit seedy, but the environment was totally family oriented. Children were playing football on the edge of the track, and little girls with twinkly shoes were dancing for the crowd. It was a great evening, with perfect temps to be outside!

The finish of the race looks something like this:

Good Luck picking a winner!

Today was a clean up day at the motorhome.  Seems like if you have only 300+ feet to live in that cleaning would be easy.  Ha!  Window screens and windows; floors; and a bit of exterior touchup took care of most of the day. We're reaching the end of our stay in Tucson, and seem to be prepping for the next adventure.

Onward and upward!

We Ruined A Good Day

Friday was a completely Ruined day.

Twenty miles east of Casa Grande lies the Casa Grande National Monument. That, co-incidently, is also the town where our friends Jo and Larry are staying, so we buzzed north seventy-odd miles, met with them, and went to see the ruins of Casa Grande; The Big House.

The Hohokam peoples (a term being phased out because the native american population feels that it is offensive) lived in this area from approximately 300 AD to 1450 AD. They transitioned from a Hunter/Gatherer society to one that focused on agrarian activities. Having received knowledge of seeds and plants from their predecessors, the Archaics, who arrived in the area via the Bering Strait land bridge, the Hohokam devised a complicated system of levees and dikes to divert river water through canals to their fields of corn and squash. Hundreds of miles of canals were dug with wooden tools so precisely that modern engineers cannot appreciably improve on the water flow.

Some two thousand people lived in the area of Casa Grande.  The four story structure was built of a mud and stone mixture that was placed without formwork in walls that are four feet thick. Each layer of mud was about two feet thick and hardened enough as the workers circled the structure to continue construction in a spiral pattern.

Window and door openings, as well as floor structures, were made of mesquite wood laid horizontally and poured into the mud walls.  The wood is long gone, but the round holes where it was placed are still visible.

The wall on the west side has two holes strategically placed to be able to see the summer and winter solstice, suggesting a knowledge of astronomy. Some say that without a calendar, these two events marked important agricultural dates.

It is amazing that such a structure has remained after all these years.  The cover was constructed in 1932 as an effort to preserve the ruins. No information exists that tell us why the inhabitants left or why they built the structure, but they obviously were an industrious sort.

Later in the day we were invited to a potluck at the RV park in Casa Grande where our friends are staying.  It was an enjoyable evening with lots of food and a Jazz band for entertainment.

Saturday, the 21st, was spent enjoying some quality time with our friends from Michigan, Dale and Lisa.  We enjoyed a nice lunch at Five Guys, a top rated national hamburger chain with a claim to 250,000 different combinations of hamburger. We did not sample them all.

Sunday we walked the 4th Ave Street Fair in Tucson.  Twice a year, 4th is closed to vehicular traffic and hundreds of booths are set up. People come from far and near: some 360,000 attended the three day event last year! Here's Donna with her new hat! You can't see the red flower on the back, but it is very stylish! And kept the 84 degree heat away….

This young fellow was one of the few vendors with free merchandise! Donna took advantage!

Rest assured, Mom was nearby…..

We had a great lunch (that is, after the lunch at the street fair) at the Tucson Tamale Company.  They make the best tamales we've ever eaten, and have an extensive menu of fillings from hot to mild, vegan to beef, and everything in between.  If you're interested, they have a website and ship all over the country….

We finished the day with a dog walk at dusk and enjoyed an Arizona sunset.

Just as we returned from our walk, we noticed the moon with a very faint planet just to the right and down a bit. About 4 o'clock. It was much prettier in person.

Deep in Laughter

Tuesday morning, St Patrick's Day, we had a reservation for a tour of one of the West's most interesting  cave formations: Karchner Caverns.  Now a state park, this cave was first discovered in 1974 by two daring spelunkers, and was kept a secret for fourteen years before being publicized with the stipulation that preservation is the primary goal.

In view of that, photography is prohibited, two airlocks are traversed, and visitors are cautioned to only touch the handrail (or each other). Even lint from clothing presents a problem, because the temperature inside is above 70 degrees F, and the humidity is very high, so that any particle of fabric will provide a breeding ground for unwanted mold or bacteria.  The walkways are cleaned every day with pressurized water which drains into a system of drains to be recycled.

Two tours are available; the Rotunda/Throne Room tour, and the Big Room Tour. We had booked the Rotunda/Throne Room tour, and enjoyed it immensely.  Since incorporation into the state park system, a series of mapping expeditions have identified the extent of the 350 million year old system, and a network of tunnels have been excavated through the limestone rock to provide easy public access.  No more headlamps and worn out shoes!  As a visitor enters, the first airlock begins to adjust humidity and temperature. The second requires a walk through a misting system that finalizes the humidity. Then on to the tour!

The tunnel/trail system that is in place is a work of art.  Constructed over several years, it was created in sections that were "tented" and sealed off from the actual cave. When a section was done, the tent was extended and more work was done. At the end, the entire assembly was dismantled and brought out from the end back to the beginning so as to minimize the impact on the cave environment.

Many delicate and awesome formations are visible from the trail, but two features stood out in our mind.  The area containing 45,000 year old bat guano was certainly a highlight…..and the final room of the tour, the Throne Room, was a perfect end to the tour. This room and it's formations resemble the court of a mighty king.  At one side is the largest limestone column in the state of Arizona, aptly named
Kublai Khan!

Donna is having fun!

A garden outside the visitor's center includes a variety of well kept local plants.

After our Karchner Cavern experience, we drifted a few miles east to Benson, AZ, for lunch.  Now, I don't know if you've ever been to Benson, but we found that it's a tough town to find a restaurant in. Or should I say, one that has curb appeal.  We settled on the Horseshoe Cafe, on 4th Street. A casual western interior and some pleasant greeters made us welcome. Our order was taken promptly, but that's when things began to fall apart; we waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. I was just about to toss a couple of bucks on the table for the water and leave when our server came by to "take your order". (!). So we waited, and we waited, and we waited.  Served finally, we were told that the salad was no longer available.."we ran out". So we waited, and we waited. Finally we got our sandwiches.  Donna had ordered a Pastrami sandwich. What she got was a Patty Melt. Good, but….Server came by and apologized, and took it away.  So we waited, and we waited. Finally all was in order, and eaten, and, I must say, very good. It was just annoying to spend 2 1/2 hours getting lunch.

Back in Tucson, we cleaned up a bit and took advantage of the generosity of our friends from Texas.  Roger and Pat had reserved two seats at the Gaslight Theatre in Tucson (billed as the Hottest Thing to hit Tucson since Sunlight) but had to return to Texas a bit sooner than they had expected.  They were kind enough to share the tickets with us, and we thank them. The production this spring is "The Ballad of Two Gun McGraw". Set in San Pecos, Texas, we follow the adventures of Two Gun McGraw, a Texas Ranger, as he saves the ranch of a recently widowed Miss Melody, from the unscrupulous businessman Jack Dagger. Dagger's henchmen, Scratchy, and Red Dog, hire a gunslinger, Lo-Ray-Do, to help. After several adventures and misadventures, including the tying of Miss Melody to the railroad tracks, all is well.  The desperadoes are jailed and Two Gun and Miss Melody find true love.

The hilarious melodrama is supported by a live band, of course, with an extremely talented piano player named Linda Ackermann, who is a native Tucsonian that has been playing at the Gaslight since 1996. She makes that piano sing as she supports the melodrama, just as in the "old days". Linda has a Masters Degree in Music, and is the Music Director for the Gaslight.

The evening ended with the cast doing a short "olio" based on the Beverly Hillbillies. One of the jokes had to do with Jethro being asked to take care of a cow. When Jed asked how it worked out, Jethro said that the cow had been ready to be a Momma, but now she was "de-calf-inated". I guess you had to be there!

The Gaslight has been in existence for over 37 years, and is one of Tucson's favorite attractions.  We wish we could be around for the next production, "The Adventures of Robin Hood", followed by "Space Wars".  If last night was any indication, they will be hilarious.

Alas, no pix were allowed during the performance, but we took a few before the festivities started:

You can see the small stage on the right where the piano is, and the bass player and drummer sit.

The theater was filled to capacity, but Roger and Pat had scored a nice table with two chairs that provided a great view of the stage.

A great evening of fun and laughter! Thanks, Roger and Pat!

Today the weather was overcast, windy, and "iffy" for rain, so we decided to take a drive a few miles south to Nogales, AZ. Right on the US-Mexico border, Nogales is a major cargo transfer point for materials and produce entering the US from Mexico. Miles and miles of distribution warehouses line I19, and big trucks rumble over every street in the town. While we could look at the border fence and see the brightly painted houses on a hill across the border, we didn't stop to check it out. Wish I had brought our passports!

We did have lunch at a small restaurant a mile or so from the border called "Exquisito Restaurant". I gotta say….pretty good food!

Copper / Titan

Saturday, March 14, "Pi" Day, saw us taking a drive south from Tucson on I19 towards Nogales. I19 is the only interstate highway in the United States to have distance signage in metric units. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a hybrid system where the speed limits signs (typically 75 mph) are in standard language, but the upcoming off ramps or town distances are in metric. Somewhat confusing, so in the spirit of retirement, we elected to ignore the signs altogether.

Our first stop on the day trip was at the Asarco Mineral Discovery Center.  This is the visitor center for a working open pit copper mine, and is the starting point for a most interesting tour. A small museum with artifacts from mining in the day and an outside display of equipment used over the years.

The overall statistics are hard to understand: The mine operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  The copper ore represents about 1% of the "dirt" hauled to the processing plant, so incredible amounts of material are excavated.

The material is excavated by blasting a carefully plotted section of the side of the mine along a shelf or step. The dirt is loaded onto haul trucks that carry 340 cubic yards of material to the processing plant at the rate of 6 1/2 miles an hour, requiring about an hour to complete a round trip.  The material from one truck yields about 2880 pounds of copper, meaning that each truck at todays prices, provides a gross $7,300 per trip. Twenty four hours a day, every day….you do the math. However, EPA regulations and operating costs erode about 95% of that amount, meaning that the mine is barely making a profit. Traces of other minerals are also found, in fact, the amount of silver found pays for the plants' million dollar electric bill.

The immense size of the excavation is hard to visualize. The pit is approximately 2 1/2 miles across on the long axis and 1 mile across on the "short" side. Each day it changes, growing a bit wider and deeper, and in fact, new haul roads need to be constructed about every two weeks.

The huge haul trucks crawl up out of the pit one right after another, stopping only during blasting.

Each truck dumps at the bottom of the ramp at the left of the following pic, where the material is initially crushed from pieces about five feet in diameter to pieces about a foot in size.

These pieces are fed into huge "ball mills" where rotating drums partially filled with steel balls of varying size crush the rock into beach sand size. Then to another mill where the balls are smaller to produce a slurry that resembles grey mud.

The slurry is mixed with a variety of chemicals including pine oil (yes, from pine trees). Small amounts of sulfur in the slurry create sulfuric acid and lots of bubbles. The pine oil precipitates the copper onto the surface of bubbles where it is separated from the residue.

The residue, or tailings, is/are floated out to huge ponds, where water is recycled and the dry material is moved to a disposal site.

This shovel is roughly half the size of the ones currently in use.  The new shovels will load a haul truck in three scoops! That's 300 plus tons!

This engine powered the haul truck just visible in the background. Note the gentleman standing in front of it. The current haul trucks are double the size.

The specs on the engine are interesting to a gear head. The fuel consumption is a little scary, though!

Just as Donna was making sure that I knew just how small I am in this universe, we met some people from Iowa.

It turns out that in each of the last two years we have stayed a few days about a mile or so from their farm!  We chatted about farming, traveling, and life in general for a bit, and came away with a new understanding of farming in the midwest. We immediately liked Dave and Marylu, and hope to see them again. What a wonderful co-incidence! Happy travels, you two!

Our second stop of the day was at the Titan II Museum near Green Valley, AZ.  This is the sole remaining Titan II facility in the country. Other sites remain from the Minuteman missile days, but only this one of the original 54 Titan II sites remain.

The tour starts at the museum, where the American Flag was flying briskly in a 30+ mph wind.

One of the first things a visitor sees is a mockup of the warhead. Roughly eight feet long and four feet in diameter, it's difficult to imagine that this is a 9 megaton nuclear device.  Our guide told us later that 9 megatons is equivalent to nine million tons of tnt, which, if formed like dynamite and placed in boxes and loaded into railroad containers and prepared for travel, would result in a train that stretched from Tucson to Canada!

Sam, our guide, is standing beside the main booster engine of the Titan II, mounted in a framework. It is extraordinarily small, since it's simply a plumbing device bringing together two oxidant chemicals and focusing the resulting blast downward.

Sam showed us the blast doors as we descended 55 steps to the control room. The doors are 12" thick, and locked with steel pins that secure the door at each corner. Weighing 6000 lbs, a young man on the tour was able to move the door with little effort.

The control room has the appearance of something from a B science fiction movie, but it was state of the art in 1966. The commander sits at the console in front, and communicates with the lieutenant commander seven feet away. Each person has separate keys, codes, and duties, which all have to mesh to launch the missile.

The entire control room is suspended from these huge metal springs to dampen movement that may disturb the missile just a few feet away. The red filing cabinet is the safe where the launch codes are kept. At each shift change, the safe would be opened and the contents verified before command is transferred. The two locks must be opened by two individuals who have independently verified an order to launch. In addition, several specific protocols have been initiated and verified, including an order direct from the President of the United States containing a specific, one-time use, code that must be manually entered using a 16 digit rotating dial much like a combination lock.

This is the master clock, set to military time. Known as Zulu time, it is Greenwich Mean Time. This is the launch clock specifying the actual launch time. This may be minutes or hours after the order to launch, so that the various missiles flying about the globe wouldn't crash into each other.

This is the local time clock. Know as the Lunch clock to distinguish it from the Launch clock.

A walk through a tunnel, again suspended from springs, brought us to the actual silo.

At 103 feet tall, it is awe inspiring. The Titan II was such a useful device that it not only protected our country but powered all of the space exploration missions of the '60's, '70's and '80's.  Every one of the missiles that was manufactured was used, either for Apollo and Gemini missions or to place satellites in orbit. The technology of the Titan II reduced the launch time from the two to threes hours required by the Titan I to 58 seconds!

One interesting question that was asked near the end of the tour had to do with the white "smoke" that we see in pictures during launch.  That is actually steam, produced by pumping ninety thousand gallons of water a minute into the main engine area, starting milliseconds after ignition. The steam damps the acoustic vibrations in the narrow silo, and provides a rapidly expanding boost to the rocket as it exits the silo.

The launch codes containing the destination co-ordinates were pre-loaded into the rocket guidance computer, and the actual target was selected via the codes from the President. There was absolutely no communication possible between the launch control members and the missile after launch. Once it was gone, it was gone. On the theory that any communication protocol could be "hacked", it was a one-time operation. If a launch had ever been ordered, the crew had food and water for a month, but only had air for a few days. A tunnel topside provided "scrubbed" air as necessary, but the crew had to wait for further orders as to when to exit the silo, which was designed for only one use (which thankfully never happened). The guidance system on the rocket was so precise that it determined the length of burn for the two stages of the rocket and the precise millisecond that the engines ceased burning and fell to earth in a trajectory that would place it within a mile of it's intended target!

All in all, a very informative tour with a great guide.  Sam lives in the area and has logged over 6,000 hours of volunteer work at the museum.  Great tour, Sam!