The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (Tucson, AZ)

 

Our stay in Tucson is coming to an end.  The weather has been great, but we must push on.

Between the two of us we have taken 565 pictures.  No, I won’t publish them all here. 

Just to show the rest of the places we have seen in Tucson.

Mission San Xavier del Bac.

The mission was founded in 1692 by Father Eusebio Kino.  It is still an active Church today.

Kitt Peak Observatory is located at 6,800ft above sea level.  It was started in 1958 by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).  It is now run in cooperation with NOAO and a number of universities around the country.  At Kitt Peak they operate 22 optical telescopes and two radio telescopes,  No one actually looks through the telescopes any more.  It is all done by cameras and computers.

Next we visited the International Wild Life Museum.  A beautiful museum south of Tucson.  Filled with great dioramas depicting scenes of the west and Africa.

Now for a pleasant surprise.  In the last blog I told you about what a disappointment Tombstone was.  We decided to put that behind us and try another tourist town, Old Tucson.  Old Tucson was created in the 1939 as a movie set.  Many famous movies and TV shows have been filmed here through the years.  When we went there they were having “Wild West Days”.  Let me tell you, it was professionally choreographed and scripted.  The sound equipment was great.  The actors were knowledgeable about the history of the park.  There were gun fights and an excellent demonstration of guns in the old west.   This one was put on by Gary Harper, Weapons Expert.

 

 

 

 

We went to the Carousel, but the Carousel was not working because of a broken part that was back ordered, Bummer!  Ann was mortified!

So, Ann went for a ride around the town.

 

Many props are from the movies and TV shows (fyi, the dresses are from Little House on the Prairie}.

This is the”Surry With the Fringe On the Top” from the movie “Oklahoma”

There is a lot of movie history here.

See you down the Roan Road… Partner !!

Busy, Busy, Busy (Tucson, AZ)

 

Let me play catch up since I have not posted in a while.

We stayed in Casa Grande for month.  My brother Vic came to visit for a few days.

On the first day we visited the Casa Grande Ruins. The second day we drove to see the Biosphere 2. 

We took a tour of one of the pumping stations in the CAP system.  CAP stands for Central Arizona Project.  It was completed in 1973 to divert water from the Colorado River to the farms in southern Arizona.  We were allowed to take pictures but not publish them on the Web.  So there is a link above to their web site.

After a month we moved 20 miles down the road to the Escapees RV Park to visit with a number of our friends  While there we went to Eloy Airport which is the skydiving capital of the world.  No. I did not Jump.  We watched other people jump.  

While staying at the Escapees RV Park (aka Roovers Roost),  One of the fun things Ann did was play in a Golf  Tournament.  It was golf as you have never played before.

Next we moved to south 80 miles to Tucson we will stay at the Mission RV park for a week and then move to the Pima County Fairgrounds for another week.

We visited the Pima Air & Space Museum.  There are hundreds of planes of all sizes, shapes, military and civilian. 

Then on to the Titan Missile Museum.  All of the Titan missiles have been removed.  This missile silo is now a museum.

Finally, for now, we took a ride to Tombstone.  It was one of the most typical tourist attractions we have ever seen.  To see a reenactment of the gunfight at the OK Corral you had to pay $10 a person.  We passed on that.  It is one of those things you need to go to and am sorry when you did, but will regret if you never went. 

And finally we went to the Kitt Peak Observatory .  More to come in the next blog.

Life is super on the Roan Road…