Our time in Tucson is over. We had an amazing, wonder-filled, and fun two months. But now it’s time to return home.

We bookended our week with the rodeo. (This rodeo is 6 day affair over two weekends). We saw the first day of the rodeo at the beginning of the week, and the rodeo parade at the end. We had very little idea of what the cowboys and cowgirls were doing, but there was a lot of excitement, a ton of people, and an easy family atmosphere. It was great good fun, but as good as it was, the week’s highlight was the Eastern Saguaro National Park.

We visited the Western park earlier. We saw the stark, dramatic landscapes that we associate with the Sonoran desert. The Eastern park is different because it gets more rain, making it a riparian area. (This is just one of many words Arizonans use to describe water.) Here we saw the famous Saguaro cactus, but we saw much more diversity, both of animals and plants. And I saw more shades of green than I could count. If you ever come to Tucson, make sure to visit both parks and Sabino Canyon.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Liz and her BFF Kylie visited this week. Of all the things we did (and we did plenty), my fav is the Sabino Canyon.

Ed and Lynne stayed with us much of the week. Some of the places we visited turned out to be a little underwhelming. Monday we visited Catalina state park and did a little hiking. Then we visited the Romaro Ruins. The ruins weren’t visible because they were all underground. The guides served up the same pre-Columbian history we heard at other places. I did notice one significant historical difference. The Spanish mission movement was started by the Jesuits. The king threw the Jesuits out and had the Franciscans take over. Why the switch? The activities in New Spain were supposed to send 20% of the take to the king. Some say the Jesuits were skimming the take. Others say the Jesuits didn’t want to take taxes from the poor indigenous population. We’ll probably never know for sure. My bet is that there was plenty of greed from all involved.

We also visited Steam Pump Ranch, which could have been interesting, but the steam pump is well hidden.

Our big event Tuesday was the Kartcher Caverns. This cave had countless examples of all manor of cave formations. It was discovered in the 1980s. The development of the cave was very good. It was wheel chair accessible, which was good thing because one person in our tour fainted. The guide used the cave’s wheel chair to get her out. Once outside, she recovered quickly.

There is an excellent chance that one of the artifacts found in this cave does not exist in any other cave. It is the skeleton of a Giant Sloth. These animals went extent about 12,000 years ago. This animal obviously died long before the cave was formed.

Our last dinner together was at El Charro, an iconic Mexican restaurant.

Thursday Ed and Lynne moved on to their next stops in Texas while Danita and I stayed behind and took a down day. We met some people we know in Snowden Overlook who are also spending some time in Tucson. We went to Opa’s, a Greek restaurant that serves excellent food.

On Friday, we visited Canoa Ranch, one of the more interesting places we toured. The ranch traces its history to a land grant issued by Spain. When Mexico got their independence, the grand had to be registered in Mexico. Then it had to be registered in the US. Apparently, few of the original Spanish land grands lasted this long. At 330,000 acres, Canoa Ranch is about half the size of Bonanza. (I know, that is the opposite of “Twice as Big”, but I learned this after I wrote the title. Besides, Bonanza was pretend. Canoa is the real deal.) The ranch’s heyday was in the 1950s,. By 1970 it was abandoned and falling apart. A developer paid $6 million for the last parcel to build housing. Then the county decided they wanted to preserve the main buildings. They paid $6 million to get about a third of the last parcel. Not a bad deal for the developer. If you are ever in Tucson and want to learn something about the history of this part of the world, Canoa is a nice place to start.

Ed and Lynne joined us Wednesday. They’ll be with us for a week. So far, the major attractions we visited include the Alfie Norville Gem Museum, the Pima Aircraft Museum, Old Tucson, and the Titan II Missile Museum. The weather continues to please — sunny with daytime highs near 80, dropping to the 50s at night. Here’s a pic of Ed and Lynne appreciating some gems at the Norville.

We visited the Model Train Museum, open for a few hours every Sunday afternoon. I was floored by the size of the place. Think of all the train fire house gardens you have seen. Put them all in one building. This was bigger than that. They had an entire warehouse filled with trains of different sizes. Each was immaculate.

There is a large community of active people in model trains. There are all manor of kits and items available to people who are into trains. The picture below is of a small scale train garden. If you look closely, there is a house in the lower left corner., This house was put together from a kit. Each piece was laser cut from an appropriate material. The gentleman is holding the skeleton of the house kit. He said it took about 40 hours to assemble the house.

A sidelight that most people didn’t pay attention to was the Erector Set. As a kid, I had a marvelous Erector Set. It came in a metal box. It had separate compartments for each of the parts. There was a booklet with all manor of things one could build. Mine even came with an electric motor. I had a fantasy of building the carousal. I didn’t even have a fraction of all the parts required. It’s just as well. I also didn’t have the skill to assemble such a complicated project. The Erector Set gave me many hours of fun.

The best part was how available the train gardens were. The Erector Set items were on a high shelf safely out of touch. But the trains were readily available. Children wandered the aisles with the help of stools that made it easy for them to see. It was also easy to touch, but everybody respected the exhibits. There were no plexiglass panels to protect the trains.

What a surprising throwback!

Our highlights this week include a concert by the Tucson Symphony and a performance of “Ain’t Misbehaving”. We also visited the Tubac Presidio which has the printing press that was used to launch Arizona’s first newspaper. It still works just fine.

Mostly we’re goofing off and enjoying some very nice weather. I hope this finds everyone doing well.

The big storm is no big deal in Tucson. We got about half an inch of rain yesterday and expect another inch today. Most locals want more rain, and also more snow fo rMt. Lemon, a local ski resort.

This was an interesting week. We visited the Spanish mission at Tumacacori. Their website said they had docent guided tours daily at 11:00. Unfortunately, the Thursday docent doesn’t do her tour every week. The knowledge of the rangers we met was abysmal. They could point us to the bathroom, the museum, and a (not free) booklet. That pretty much exhausts what they know. Fortunately, the park service did a terrific job of explaining the site history in their signs. I was surprised how honest they were about the poverty of this mission. For example, they had a separate building used as viewing room (for the deceased). They didn’t have the funds to build the planned dome roof. My biggest surprise was to see flowing water in Santa Cruz river. Most of the rivers around here are dry most of the year.

Tumacacori has several interesting elements. It’s about 40 miles south of Tucson, not far from Nogales, Mexico. We knew we weren’t far from the border, but we were still surprised when we encountered a border patrol check point in the north-bound direction. An ICE officer stood in the middle of the two-lane interstate, looking at the faces of the people in the cars, and either waving traffic through or stopping it to check credentials.

I-19 is interesting in its own self. All mileage markers and exit numbers are metric (Kilometers instead of miles). I remember a very long time ago, there was a push to change the US to the metric measurement system. The effort failed. I-19 was built during the height of this speculation. They posted metric distances as an experiment. When the movement failed, all the signs were up. It might be the only significant US highway using metric measure.

Our last surprise was the best. We stopped at a small Mexican cafe close to Tumacacori, called Wisdom’s Cafe. This being a rather rural area, we didn’t expect much. But we got an excellent lunch. The current owners are the third generation to run the place. The have a desert they call a fruit Burro. It’s a fruit-pie filling in a deep-fried dough (a kind of sweet chimichanga). We selected the lemon-cherry flavor. It came with a huge scoop of ice cream. Ole! I am out of room for coffee cups, but this place absolutely must be acknowledged for it’s superior food and delightful surprises. Maybe I’ll start a virtual coffee cup collection.

Friday evening we went to a demonstration at the Sonoran Glass School. The artist made a glass dragon. It was quite amazing. If you are interested, you can find some pics on the website below this post.

Today rain chased us away from the planned living history exhibition at the presidio. Instead we spent some time at the local mall, followed by a very un-Mexican and un-historic frozen pizza for dinner.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Our second visit to the Sonoran Glass School featured Jason Christian. He made a glass dragon, using local glass blowers to round out his team. It took two hours to make the dragon, but this is misleading. Earlier in the day, he had spent six hours making the head, scales, and other pieces he used in his demonstration. Here you see the glass used to make the body. The actual glass blowing was a very small part of the work. Danita and I finagled seats in the front row. The hot glass was pointed straight at me, which caused a moment’s discomfort. Throughout the process, I was amazed at how precise, careful, and quick the movements were. The smallest mis-step could destroy the work.

Here Jason rolled small cylinders of glass to add texture to the body.

Jason and the team are adding a small piece to the dragon, Torches are used to make. the glass where the piece will be placed quite hot so the piece will join the body. The rest of the body must be cooler so it retains its shape.

Jason is making adjustments to the body. Note that the smallest error by the helper (on the left) will break the glass and destroy the dragon.

The most difficult step is joining the head to the body.

This is the final adjustment and the best picture of the finished dragon. As soon as this was complete, the dragon was immediately rushed into an annealing oven. The dragon is slowly brought to room temperature over a 6 hour cooling period.

This is one of Jason’s dragons. It’s a little smaller. I found it on the internet for just $5,000. Jason’s 5-year-old son names the dragons. He thinks it’s cool that his dad makes dragons.

We had a week full of activity. One of my favorites is the Zoppe Family One-ring Circuits. Danita wisely purchased the expensive seats — folding chairs with backs — so we didn’t have to sit in the bleacher. Its under a real tent and it’s a lot of fun. It’s filled with amazing acts of balance and skill, and kids, and cotton candy, and more!

We re-visited the Presidio Museum. Last year we arrived in the middle of a school tour. They let us wonder around and hear what the reenactors had to say. This time we got an excellent tour by this docent. The dome is the bread furnace. They actually bake bread for the kids to eat.

Tucson has a glass blowing studio (natch). Anybody who wants to try their hand can attend classes. This week Kazuki Takizawa gave a short presentation and made a piece. Kazuki suffered from mental health issues. Making glass is a big help in overcoming his problem.

The sleeper this week was Dillinger Days. Dillinger was captured and arraigned here. Every year they have Dillinger Days. Last year we went in the evening and saw people dressed in period clothing, listened to Jazz, and watched them drink alcohol. This year we went to the morning reenactment of Dillon’s downfall. It was much better than I expected. It was a very well done 2-hour play. Dillinger’s gang was recognized when they evacuated hotel guests past a fire in the Hotel Congress. Here’s the fire truck that came to put out the fire. We also saw this truck in the “Rolling Thru Time” museum. It looked much more impressive sitting outside the Congress Hotel.

They also had a showing of period antique Ford vehicles. This snazzy car was at the hotel, but not in the antique Ford show because it wasn’t a model A.

The Model A club put on quite a show. Here is one of the 4 rows of vehicles on display.

I hope this finds everyone doing well.

Dani and Gayle joined us for a few days. We packed the days full of excitement. Here’s less than half of all we did. We started with the Fox Theater, where the Tucson Symphony played music to go with Charlie Chapman movies. The man was a genius. His movies are funny and kind. The theater was recently restored. Locals call the decor “Western Art Deco”. We did a food tour — 7 stops in 4 hours. All the food we had was very good. Some was extraordinary. “Old Tucson” is a tourist destination and it is also a working movie set. Think of “Little House on the Prairie” and countless cowboy movies. Only the tour was running. The actors were still practicing their shows. Watching the practice was a bonus. One doesn’t have to explicitly stop to see amazing scenery, but we did. Saguaro Park is incredible. As a topper, we experienced an unusual day of dramatic clouds. My favorite was the Gaslight Theater. Admission includes a large bag of popcorn. You don’t have to order food, but if you do, it will be perfectly good. From singing along to booing the bad guy, audience participation is encourage. The Gaslight is very popular with the locals.

Enjoy the pics on the website.