We wanted to see some petroglyphs and also visit the Pima Air Museum. We learned that taking an Uber out of town is a lot easier than getting an Uber to get back. So we Ubered to a rental car company and drove ourselves. We planned to use an old car GPS but we were sort a critical part. So we fired up the smart phone map app. Danita held the phone and gave me advice while I heard the phone’s instructions though my hearing aids. It sounds rather confusing, but we quickly got navigation working pretty well. We saw plenty of petroglyphs. Here’s one that I think represents a goat, two sun bursts, and a wagon wheel.
My favorite is a very nice spiral. The Australian aboriginals used spirals in their ancient art, and still use them today. It is thought that ancient spirals represented water, which would be quite valuable in an arid climate such as exists in most of Australia and the Sonora Desert.
After lunch, we visited the Pima Air Museum. We saw more airplanes than we could count. Here’s an attractive plane that caught my eye.
We started our day at the University of Arizona Tree Ring Museum. This is a big deal museum, the biggest and best of its kind anywhere. They have over 750,000 tree ring samples going back to the 1920s and coming from around the world. They have several professors pulling down grants on various tree ring related issues. I would say more, but I can’t get past what I’ve already said.
After lunch, we went to the Arizona History Museum. We saw pretty much what I expected. Some of the boards seemed to have text that was word-for-word what I had read earlier. That doesn’t mean I didn’t see a few way cool things. For example, here’s a snap shot of a Thacher slide rule. The scale rotates in a helix around the cylinder to get additional precision in calculations. It is very rare to see one in this excellent condition.
Studebaker was known for building rugged, dependable, high quality horse drawn wagons. Here’s a 1903 Mountain wagon that would be perfect for traveling across Arizona. I don’t think I convinced Danita this would be a fun thing to do.
Unlike most other wagon manufacturers, Studebaker successfully converted themselves into a thriving car manufacturer, maintaining their reputation for rugged, reliable, dependable cars. Here’s a beautiful 1923 “Big 6” Sheriff’s special, generating 70 HP and capable of going 80 MPH. Studebaker sold this as a 7 passenger touring car. Many Arizona Sheriffs had one of these bad boys.
UA does a lot of interesting things. We took a light rail (new transportation mode — you hoo!) to see two of them. Our first stop was the pharmacy museum. Danita appreciated this because her dad trained as a pharmacist. Dr. Ted Tong was kind enough to give us the tour. UA has what is probably the best pharmacy museum in the world. Here is a pic of them in front of an early machine to help make pharmaceuticals.
Danita with Dr. Ted Tong
We spent the afternoon at the Carris Mirror Lab. This facility makes large mirrors (up to 8.8 meters) with an accuracy of 14 nanometers. This is the only facility in the world that can make one of these mirrors. They are limited to 8.8 meters because the highest overpass out of Tucson has only 10 meters of clearance. This picture shows one of many mirrors that will be used in the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is currently under construction in the Chilean desert. This mirror is being polished to its final shape. It doesn’t look shiny because the lab provides only the glass for the mirror. The mirror will be coated with aluminum in Chile.
The lab has not yet made a mirror for use in space. The guide told us that a land-based mirror sees as well as a mirror in space, thanks to new technology developed by Cal Tech that removes atmospheric turbulence from the image. He said that if this technology had been available, they would never have launched the Hubble telescope. If ever you visit Tucson, I strongly encourage you to spend a few hours taking this tour.
8.8 meter mirror. Note the people in the lower right. This mirror is BIG.
I hope this finds everyone doing well. And come to Tucson to visit the Carris lab.
We visited the Tucson Museum of Art yesterday. They have a few pieces by well known artists such s Rodin and Sisley. The majority of their collection provides a wide view local art — Native American, Spanish, etc. The museum is built on land that used to be Tucson’s China Town, then became a lively Hispanic neighborhood. One building from that era is restored and focuses on this part of local history. Here is a pic of about a third of an El Nacimiento. Comparing this El Nacimiento to a Nativity scene is like comparing a model T Ford to a rocket ship. The nativity is in the upper right.
Another section focuses on Native American art. The largest reservation in southern Arizona is for the Tohono O’odham. This is a group I hadn’t heard about before. This modern pot caught my eye.
For food, we start with the hotel breakfast, have a nice lunch out, then have salad and sandwich in the room for dinner. But yesterday we took a 40 minute bus ride to Pinnacle Peak. This is a low cost steak house popular with locals and tourists alike. The restaurant is surrounded by small shops (notably including a chocolatier) and a small train ride, all with an old-time western motif. Some 30 years ago, I joined Danita on a business trip to Tucson. The place hasn’t changed at bit. The restaurant’s hook is that if a man comes to dinner wearing a necktie, the waitress will cut it off. The ceremony includes a cow bell and a loud speech denouncing neckties. The ceiling is covered with tie remnants. I now have two ties immortalizing my visits to Tucson.
Our only activity today was the Desert museum. It’s a huge facility, and we spent over four hours there. They have a zoo-like display of animals, but also much more. Over 100 volunteers keep the place humming. If you visit enough zoos, you will find a show of birds flying out in the open. We’ve attended several such shoes. But the show at the Desert museum was the best ever. Everybody stood on the trail. There were hand-hold bars to help visitors turn and look while the birds flew just inches over our heads. I can’t find words to describe what it’s like to witness a raptor fly directly at me just a few inches over my head.
The down side of the day was that transportation got quite confused. I won’t try to offer a detailed account, mostly because it’s boring for you-all. I’ll just say that Uber transportation can be somewhat less than perfect.
First things first, and the most important first thing is food. Our breakfast is included with the room. We eat lunch out, then have salad and sandwich for dinner. We thought we had everything solved yesterday, until we got to the end of dinner and had nothing for desert. The hotel has a snack shop, but that’s not the kind of desert we wanted. So first thing this morning, we went to the bakery around the corner and got a couple of treats for after dinner, It was just right.
We stayed within walking distance of our hotel today. Our first stop was the Presidio, a Spanish fort. The adobe fort is long gone. But the locals dedicated a sizeable area where the fort used to be. The built a very effective re-creation. We thought we would get a docent tour, but the docent called in. That turned out to be fine. A school group of 50 or so kids was there, along with a full complement of reenactors. We got to read the “adult” posters we wanted to read, hear many if the interesting presentations, and enjoy the energy of 50 kids running around in somewhat organized outdoor activities.
For lunch, we were lucky to hear about the El Charro Cafe. This restaurant has been owned by the same family for over 100 years. They claim they invented the chimichanga when a cook accidentally dropped a burrito in the fryer. The cook cursed, but found the result was surprisingly quite tasty, They couldn’t sell a dish named after a cuss word, so they changed it slightly and came up with “chimichanga”. Best of all, the restaurant was only two blocks down the street. How could we not have chimichangas for lunch? If you look closely, you will see Danita is sitting in Senator John McCain’s chair.
In the afternoon, we visited the University of Arizona’s gem and mineral museum. This is the best such museum we have ever visited, including the Smithsonian. It is one of only three museums with a moon rock on exhibit. The moon rock doesn’t look like much, but it illustrates the level of quality of this collection.
It’s really nice to have over two weeks in Tucson. We don’t have to rush, or prioritize sights. We’re just taking our time. We started with the visitor center. Unlike other visitor centers I have visited, this one is a museum in its own right. It’s located in the old courthouse. It discusses several facets of Tucson and southern Arizona. We learned something new about the Native Americans, the history of transportation, development of Tucson, etc. One of the fun exhibits is a thorough renovation of the courtroom where John Dillinger was arraigned. They had a pretend radio show about what happened, complete with an old time advertisement.
After a nice lunch, we moved on to the Transportation museum. We didn’t expect much from this one. In spite of our low bar, the museum was way below what we thought it would be. On the bright side, it was free.
As I mentioned yesterday, the local grocery store is closed. We learned that they plan to take 10 months renovating the place. We decided to take the bus to a Safeway supermarket. It takes more or less half an hour one way, depending on how long you have to wait for the next bus. Busses are free this year. And we added a new transportation mode to our trip. But the sobering thought is that downtown Tucson is a food desert, at least for the next 10 months.
The flight to Tucson was uneventful. We’re staying in a Home 2 Suite hotel in the downtown district. The property is excellent. Our room is fabulous. Our bedroom and living area are separated with a door, which makes it much easier for one of us to sleep in a little. Here’s a view from our 6th floor lobby.
We were counting on a locally owned super grocery store for most of our needs. It’s a short walk from the hotel and stocks a large variety of pre-prepared foods. Unfortunately, it’s closed for renovation. That’s no real problem. Public transportation is quite good and totally free.
It was time to get dinner. We arrived on the first day of a major cold snap. Evening temperatures were around 40 degrees. We found a bar/restaurant that has an excellent reputation. The food was very good for bar food. We even had a restaurant favorite — chocolate covered bacon. It was a nice dinner but there was one thing that surprised us. The place had air conditioning, but it doesn’t have heat. Customers were eating with their coats on. Nobody else seemed to find this at all remarkable. I remember when I was a kid, some places started air conditioning the entire store. They would put signs on their windows advertising it was cool inside, with a picture of a penguin standing in the snow. We didn’t see any store advertising they were warm. ;-)
We are leaving for vacation Wednesday. Our first few weeks are in Tucson. You might heard of the movie “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”. If you didn’t see it, you haven’t missed much. But the title and premise were good. We’re doing that this year — plus we’re adding a boat (cruise to Mexico), and Uber, walking, and a bunch of other transportation modes.
As most of you know, it’s snowing today. We might get 5″. 40 years ago, it would have been an inconvenience. But we haven’t had any substantial snow for 3 years. Nobody knows what to do, other than perhaps check that their car’s flashers work. The snow ends tonight. We are very lucky to be leaving Wednesday. Everything should be back to normal by then. (Fingers crossed!). If we are delayed a day, it’s no big deal.
A few days ago, my router started flaking out. I had to unplug and re-plug it to get it working again. This is a really bad thing because our security cameras need WiFi to do their thing. I ordered a new router. (MikroTek hAP ax2, if you are into that kind of thing). It’s a sweet piece of equipment, but setup is more complicated than I thought it would be. I spent two long days getting a simple setup we can live with. I’ll work on it more after we return.
For more fun, I fired up the security cameras. One doesn’t work. Amazon says they can get a replacement by 11:00 AM tomorrow. We’ll see.
We were probably the first people reading this to celebrate 2025. We had a “New Year at Noon” dinner. Ed & Lynne, and Rick and Suzy joined us. Danita prepared a wonderful meal. Here are a few pics.
In retrospect, our Christmas turned out to be a little more quiet than we would have preferred. We opened presents in the morning. Then Danita prepared a brunch and we took it to Mom’s. We had quiche, fruit, and muffins. It was all very good.
I received a gift that I think is way cool. Of course, some may not understand its significance, but I think it’s an amazing idea. It’s a digital sundial. It actually displays time in digital format (like this: “12:40”). It needs no batteries, computers, or WiFi. It has one moving part. You set the time by twisting the sundial body. As simple as it is to use, it is based on some math that I frankly don’t understand. Digital sundial math What could be cooler than that? I’m a little frustrated that we haven’t had a day of good strong sunshine, so the display is not very good. I’m including a picture from the internet.
Our parish has two teams counting the plate. Each team counts once every four weeks. The other team got the checks wrong two times in a row. For some reason I don’t understand, getting checks wrong is a much bigger deal than getting cash wrong. Our bank threatened to prohibit our dropping the deposit in their night box. If we got it wrong again, we would have to send two people to wait in the bank while tellers counted. If there was a discrepancy, the two would make a corrective entry in the deposit slip. Obviously, nobody wants to sit in the bank lobby for a hour or two. Our pastor gave us his best half-time motivational speech. Because our team consistently gets it right, there was some less-than-good-natured grumbling about the other team — until I warned that we could end up doing all the counts. Nobody on our team wants that either. All in all, it was a big hoora.
Because our team prefers to count the Christmas plate separate from the regular weekly offerings, we have another count January 5. Hopefully the residual bad feelings will have been resolved.
We’re getting ready for our big vacation. This is a two-month jaunt in the western US (Jan 8 – March 1). We are deciding on clothing, counting pills, and deciding where we will have our last Sunday breakfast. (Bob Evans won.) Details to follow!
