Archive for February, 2006
February 5, 2006 at 9:51 am · Filed under Places to go
Wow, we’re worn out. We’ve spent the last two days being tourists and it’s tiring. Today is going to be a slower day to catch up on business and relax a bit.
The big event of yesterday was the Pima Air & Space Museum. Fair warning: if you find wandering around 80 open acres and four hangars looking at old airplanes (primarily WW II through 1970s era) to be dull, skip down to the picture of Emma, below.
For Andy and I, it was pretty interesting. The Pima Air & Space Museum has an excellent collection of aircraft, thanks to the promixity of the Air Force Base next door, where hundreds of obsolete warbirds have been scrapped. Once in a while they just close the road separating the two locations and tow over another addition to the collection.
The highlights of the collection are an SR-71 Blackbird (2.5 times the speed of sound and built with slide rules!), several planes which were used as Air Force 1 including Kennedy’s, a Constellation, B-17, B-24, “Mig Alley”, plus many fighters, helicopters, a Guppy, an Electra (like Amelia Earhart’s) … there are hundreds of planes to look at. It’s a full day if you like aircraft, and they even sell an optional 2-day ticket. My advice: spring for the extra $5 for the tram tour to get more info and help keep the family from melting down. Also bring plenty of water, even in winter.
We also ran over to the ASARCO open pit copper mine for a tour later in the afternoon. It’s about 20 minutes south of Tucson on I-19. Unfortunately we arrived too late for the last tour (it leaves at 3:30). The Visitor Center is free and quite interesting if (again, like me and Andy) you like industrial topics. Emma bore up bravely but most of it was over her head. We’re going to owe her a major “kid day” pretty soon, for being such a good trouper.
I dropped Andy off at the airport at 5:30 this morning and so that ends our tourist phase in Tucson. We need to get the Nissan’s oil changed, load up for travel, pick up some necessities, and maybe try the pool. (They keep it heated to 90 degrees, we discovered.) Tomorrow, we head out for New Mexico, where we are planning to meet Bert & Janie Gildart in Alamogordo and visit White Sands National Monument.
February 4, 2006 at 7:39 am · Filed under Places to go
We are starting to see that Tucson has a tremendous amount to offer. No wonder so many snowbirds have landed here. We’re never going to see all the things we want before we have to head east.
Yesterday we drove about 48 miles over to visit Kartchner Caverns State Park, which was (as predicted) very good. We’ve seen a lot of caves over the years and this one is unique — well decorated, diverse, and comfortable inside at 68 degrees. They’ve installed a really good visitor’s center and the volunteer guide we had was first-rate. I would post pictures but they do not allow cameras on the tour at all. If you plan to go, be sure to visit the Arizona state parks website to get information first.
While were there, Emma and I went over their national map of famous caves in the US. We’ve visited several just on this trip (Lehmann Cave in Great Basin NP, the talus caves in Pinnacles Nat’l Monument, Kartchner) and soon we may drop in on Carlsbad if we have time. Last summer in our Argosy we visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, too. All great visits.
There’s a campground at Kartchner so you could stay overnight if you wanted to, but no much else to do in the immediate area. Tombstone and Bisbee are down the road a bit, but there are more convenient locations closer to those towns.
If you get hungry at Kartchner, you’re out of luck unless you have your RV with you. Benson is the nearest town with restaurants, about nine miles away. We can recommend Reb’s Cafe — a “real” place with reasonably good food. And they put plenty of the malt in the malted shakes, which makes Eleanor happy.
Our next stop was Sabino Canyon, which is part of the Coronado National Forest, northeast of Tucson. This is a great spot, also recommended. There’s a parking/admission fee but our National Parks pass (with Eagle hologram on the back) got us in for free. (If you visit a lot of US Forest Service spots, the pass and hologram are well worth the $65 annual fee.)
Sabino Canyon is a terrific place for easy hiking. You can choose paved roads suitable for cycling or strollers, or dirt trails that parallel the hills. There are horse trails, too.
Emma spots a roadrunner!
The scenery is great everywhere. For a really easy view, you can hop a tram up into the canyon and get off anywhere you want. The trams run all day, so you can design a hike that works for you, even one-way hikes that only go downhll. We got there late so we skipped the tram and just took a casual two mile walk so we could take our time and talk about what we spotted.
Emma gets a peek at the Saguaro fruit.
By the way, we are now in the Chihuahuan desert, rather than the Sonoran desert. It’s a not a lot different, but there are some variations in plants and animals. One animal that remains the same from the Mojave to here is the mountain lion, but of course we didn’t see any.
I spot so many unusual signs as we travel that I have started collecting them (photgraphically). Here’s my “Sign of the Week”.
February 3, 2006 at 8:04 am · Filed under Uncategorized
What a great day for visitors! Around noon, I was cycling around the park and dropping off copies of Airstream Life on the steps of every Airstream I found (we have four here now). When I got back, I found a fellow in a bright aloha shirt looking at our trailer. It turned out to be blog reader Mike Birch, who had deduced what park we were in from the clues I gave in the blog!
Mike and his wife Tracy were just stopping in to say Hi, but we couldn’t let them go that easily, so we ended up having a tour through the interior and then sitting out under the awning on a glorious Arizona day. They are heading west from Texas in their Airstream right now, and just happened to be crossing paths with us here in Tucson. They’ve offered us courtesy parking at their place in Colorado, which we may be able to accept when we come back west in May.
Unfortunately we had to cut our visit short because we needed to get over to the airport to pick up our friend Andy. He’s escaping the cold damp weather of Boston for a few days. Poor guy showed up wearing a fleece and blue jeans (we were wearing sandals and shorts). We took him over to a couple of gem show venues and then headed back to the trailer for dinner.
It’s very unusual to have a guest in our Airstream, but it is fun. Since we have the only Airstream floorplan with two bedrooms, we are actually quite comfortable. And the weather is great so we aren’t spending much time inside anyway.
February 2, 2006 at 11:18 am · Filed under Places to go
We are really lucky this week. The famous Tucson Gem & Mineral Show is in full swing this week, and it is great! All over the city, in dozens of venues, people have come from all over the world to buy and sell gems, minerals, pearls, jewelry, meteorites, fossils, crystals, giant geodes …. and Native American crafts, watches, rare coins … and kettle corn.
We started off fairly restrained, at the first venue we visited, not buying anything even though everything looked really great. In the second venue, I broke down and bought kettle corn for everyone. Eleanor bought a pair of cool bowls made of fossilized stone.
In the third and fourth stops, we completely lost control. Emma bought a trilobite fossil, Eleanor bought necklaces, and I bought a collectible watch. How can you resist? Everything is a good bargain, and the vendors will often drop their prices to wholesale just for the asking. It was a good thing the shows all closed up by 7 pm, so we were forced to go home.
Emma and her trilobite
It is also a good thing we don’t have a house back in Vermont, or we would have bought much more “stuff” to put in it. I saw some amazing fossil sheets, as large as 5 ft x 3 ft, for ridiculously low prices. Those won’t fit in the trailer …
When you live in limited space, the key to buying things is that you have to decide what to get rid of at the same time. Something comes in, something goes out. We just don’t have the room to accumulate “stuff” so we try not to buy things we don’t really need. This shopping spree was definitely an exception.
We will go back to more of the show today (after we pick up Andy, our guest, at the airport) but hopefully we’ll just look, and not buy. It’s an amazing event and I can highly recommend it for anyone in Tucson this time of year.
February 1, 2006 at 9:43 am · Filed under Eleanor's posts
I have to tell you, I absolutely LOVE having a full hookup camp site. It means I don’t have to worry about things like taking a shower and washing the dinner dishes in the same evening because of the grey tank capacity. With water & electric only sites, we will use the showers at the park – if provided. I also tend to prepare “one pot” meals and use paper plates & bowls to minimize the dirty dish load. But with W/E/S I can let my culinary skills loose. Not just because I don’t need to be concerned about the number of dirty pots, pans, & dishes, but because campgrounds that offer W/E/S are usually within or just on the outskirts of a major city. That means I can purchase local specialty foods and have a grand time cooking in the kitchen. With full hookup the Airstream truly is a house. (It’s always a home.)
“Campsites” at Bolsa Chica State Beach, near Los Angeles
What I don’t like are those “RV Resorts” (and I use this term as loosely as the proprietors of said places) that offer the amenities of full hookup at the expense of nature. There isn’t a tree or shrub to be found and the closest thing to wildlife is the dog in the Class A 10 feet to the right. The goal of these “parks” is to cram as many RV’s as possible onto an expanse of asphalt next to a major highway near a major city and then throw in a laundry and club house so it can be called a resort.
Is this a camping experience, or a resort? Neither.
Don’t take what you just read in the wrong way. Some – albeit, too few – RV Resorts are what they claim to be – resorts. They offer restaurants, heated pools and spas, play areas for the children, some natural shade (though manicured and manipulated), a guest laundry, fitness center, gift shop and general store. They are basically a high end hotel where you provide your own “guest room”.
The one we are at in Tucson offers all of the above plus patio furniture and a fruit bearing citrus tree at each of its 384 sites. Also a library, public restrooms & showers, propane grills, meeting rooms and a convention hall. The RV Resort we stayed at in Benbow, CA for Thanksgiving offered free WiFi, and its own 18 hole golf course. These are but two great places to stay with your Airstream if you desire what I call “the Ritz experience”. It’s obvious that for a lot of folks, this is exactly what they are looking for. But I don’t need or want all that these real resorts have to offer.
What I desire is the convenience of W/E/S with the advantages of being in a natural setting. We have been to such places! There are some very lovely camping spots that offer full hookups and not at the expense of the trees. (not to sound like the Lorax) 🙂
Cherry Creek SP, CO offers full hookup and maintains an air of dignity. It is a great place to camp, with a huge playground, and a reservoir that allows swimming and boating. It has miles of walking and biking trails. Wildlife is abundant – we saw great horned owls, jack rabbits, mule deer, coyote, and magpie. All this in Denver!
Full hookups at Cherry Creek State Park, Aurora CO
When we camped near Santa Barbara, CA at Carpinteria State Beach, our full hookup site was less than 50 feet from the ocean and even though we were parked on asphalt, we were also parked under trees. We had shade, the sound of the waves and a view of the water.
In Anza-Borrego Desert SP, CA the Palm Canyon campground is in the desert. There we had the benefit of evening Ranger talks, fabulous hiking, tons of wildlife including Big Horn Sheep and hummingbirds, and our full hookup site had palm trees, desert flowers, cactus and an incredible 360 degree view.
Full hookups at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Unfortunately, these fabulous campgrounds are few and far between. It is painful to acknowledge that more than not, the only full hookup campgrounds available are no more than a barren stretch of land with W/E/S. We have found ourselves in one or two of these places also, and having experienced both is why I think I abhor the latter so.
You see, I know we don’t always have to give up the wonders that nature has to offer to be able to get the benefits that man can supply.
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