Tucson
We did some nice sightseeing in Tucson the last couple of days.  The roads and traffic in Tucson reminds us a lot of Saskatoon.  The roads are in very bad shape and the traffic is, well, kinda scary.  Seems they have not kept up with the roads and people take crazy chances as they are tired of waiting in traffic and for lights.
Not a place we would choose to drive around in for long.  There are, however,  some lovely sights, stores and restaurants as well as nature and hiking trails near the city.  We purchased a passport of Southern Arizona attractions and it sure was great as we got a lot of buy one get one free admissions.  Wednesday we went to the Titan Missile Silo.  I will admit I was not very interested in going but I actually enjoyed it and learned something to boot!

The missile is twice as tall as this pole and buried underground in a huge silo.

It was built in the 1960's and has 10 foot thick concrete and metal lining the silo and surrounding control station.  On the picture just above this you will notice that the light is built on a spring just like everything else was in case it was attacked.  This was built to withstand a nuclear attack and still be able to launch the missile.  We learned about the cold war and how the missiles were kept secure and manned.  There was a huge big cement door that covered over the silo.  When the area was entered by new crews there were very specific procedures to follow before they would be allowed access.  Most of the areas had to be attended by 2 persons  at all times. These people were working 4 to a shift 24 hour shifts and they were many many feet down in the ground.

This is the control room where they monitored what may be going on on the surface.  All the while our tour guide was talking I thought he seemed to be sort of looking at me.  Thought maybe I had jam on my face or something - anyway he said he needed a helper to do a demonstration so of course that was ME.  He showed us the procedure for if they actually had to launch the missile.We both had to turn our keys (after a lengthy procedure to obtain the keys) at the same time.  Once that was done, there was no going back.  He picked a woman because there were lots of women who worked  responsible positions with the Air Force and he was rather proud of that (I kinda liked that too).  And . . .  I wasn't the only woman on the tour  LOL

I even got a fancy keepsake.  It sure made me think how lucky we are that a nuclear war was avoided.  It also gave me a better appreciation for the people that had to work there knowing that someday they may have to turn that key if they were ordered to, and what the outcome of that would be.

After that we went on a tour of the ASARCO copper mine which was visible from the missile silo. This was super amazing.  The tour guide told us about the mining and smelting.  Then we all got on the tour bus and drove up to the actual mine.

 The colors of the rock and sky were so nice.

This was a HUGE hole!  Those steps (they call them benches)  are about 40 feet high. There are rows of holes in the flat part of this picture - that is where they will be blasting that section of rock away to uncover more copper.

 You can see the vehicles (barely) digging the overburden (the "burden" that is over the copper) off and hauling it away.  Notice the pretty colors of the different rock in some of these pictures.  We are up pretty high looking down into the mine. The hole is now 1200 feet deep. To the right near that dark area (which is naturally occurring water that they use to keep the dust down) is where they are currently digging out copper. They also  re-claim 80% of the water that they use in the mill.

  Copper costs 1.75 per pound to produce.  The electric bill at this mine is 1.6 million a month!  They manage to pay this with the gold, silver and molybdenum that they find in with the copper.  One of the tires alone for those big trucks is 6000.00 

Believe it or not there is a small amount of copper in this rock which looks like something you would see used as landscaping material.

 The huge rocks are sent through a series of 4 crushers until it is a fine powder like flour.  Then it goes in these huge vats where it is mixed with pine oil and a couple of other materials.  The copper somehow goes in the bubbles and floats to the surface and the slurry sinks to the bottom.

It is sort of hard to see in the picture but the bubbles are quite coppery in this picture. It smelled like pine in the mill. They take the slurry and pile it and spray it with a substance  so they don't have huge dust problems.  That being said, the mine had just paid a huge fine for a dust storm..  They plant desert plants over it as well.

We each got a piece of rock with copper in it at the end of the tour.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving here so not much was open.  Very few restaurants were even open.  We did laundry, cleaned up the house and then I went to the pool!  First pool day since March and it was super!   Today we were headed out to Catalina State Park and realized that one of the other parks we wanted to go to was right on the way so we changed our mind  and went to  Sabino Canyon.  It was another beautiful day and I was thinking of the pool and Don was thinking of an hour less driving so it was a win win.

Ooooh la la!

Oh - this was our Thanksgiving sunset.

 There is a lot more vegetation in this part of the desert, there is some water nearby so there are actually a lot more trees in with the cactus.

The hike was about 2.5 miles but we took a few detours (some intentional some not) so we are not quite sure how far it ended up. We picked this trail because of the water and hoping to see some birds (well I was hoping to see some birds) - bit of a wild goose chase but the walk was amazing anyway.

I love how all the trees co-habitate.  A lot of cactus actually start out their young lives in the shade of some of the bushes.

 We had to take the high road at this point because the creek had quite a bit of water in it and it was not passable by foot.  We saw some people go over by horse tho.

 The sky was such a pretty blue today, and I just loved how the vegetation and rocks looked.

Isn't this the prettiest little road runner ever??  He was not even 4 feet from me.  I just started talking to him and telling him I wanted to see his pretty feathers so he obliged.  One beady little eye was on me the whole while tho.  Their tail feathers are all colors just like a peacock.
Well one last day here tomorrow and then off to Mesa on Sunday.  If I get my wish we will go to the  botanical garden and the zoo tomorrow.
I had a lovely 1.5 hour skype talk with my girlie tonite and Don made supper while we were talking  - it was a truly great day.

                                Arizona
Since the last blog we have been in Tombstone and Tucson Arizona.  We stayed in a cute RV park in  Tombstone and we didn't even unhook the car.  The main old town streets were within walking distance so it was a different experience and a nice break for Don. 

There were musicians out singing every block or so and the old buildings were converted to restaurants, gift shops, pubs etc.  We (or I should say I) learned a lot of history about the area - Don already knew it, seriously if we could have taken field trips like this I would have known history too.  Anyways, we watched a mock gun fight of the shoot out at the OK Corral. 

Heh - we even got our picture taken with the actors  - just the good guys tho - the bad guys were dead by this time.

You could take a buggy ride and learn about all of the buildings and their history as well.   We opted to watch a histogram about the history of the town.  It was amazing to learn that the "cowboys" back then really were the bad guys.  They basically tore up the town, robbed stage coaches and stole cattle.  We also learned about the silver mining that turned this into a town of over 10,000 in the early 1900's.  The population is now about 1500.  We went to an amazing jewellery shop called the Wizard's Workshop.  The owners have lived in Tombstone a long time, they have actually prospected for all of their gems in their younger years and now they make all the jewellery in the store.  They shared their time with us telling us about prospecting for the materials and how they make the jewellery.   They had some fire agate which was an amazing stone.  They will also custom make jewellery with a stone you pick.  They even had copper pieces.  I so wanted to buy something as I would have loved to support these wonderful people, however I am just not a jewellery person and I know it would end up sitting in a box with my other jewellery.
After a couple of days of the wild, wild west we headed to Tucson - we are staying at the Far Horizon RV Park and it is very nice. We had a very nice day the first day we were here and I was eyeing up the swimming pool. The next 3 days were another story.  A big winter storm went through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.  We got a lot of rain here and there were flash flood and wind warnings so we didn't venture too far.  New Mexico and Texas got ice and snow.  This same storm is heading east and making for a lot of problems for travelling for Thanksgiving which is on Thursday.  Thanksgiving is a bigger holiday here than Christmas it seems. 
    We will be having our 4th Thanksgiving of the year.  How cool is that?  We celebrated with our friends Jocelyn and Wes, then we cooked another Thanksgiving dinner at Kylie's and Tami and Dar came over.  Then when we went to Estevan we had turkey supper with my mom and dad and my sister Jen, her husband Mark and my nephew Max.   Truly thankful - although I missed having thanksgiving with one sister Karen and her family - have to get more organized for next year!!
Luckily the 3 days  we were sorta hanging around I found that there was a passport thing you could buy that gives half off for a lot of the attractions.  The first thing we did was tour the Pima Air and Space Museum (this was Don's choice.) 

 This was a big ol' helicopter and I thought it was funny how they painted the teeth on it.

This is the world's smallest plane -  it actually flies and if you are a contortionist you can manage to squeeze yourself into it.

See that big black plane?  It is called a blackbird, its a spy plane,  the nose of that little plane in front is pointing right at Don.  You will excuse my rather simplistic description that follows but although the man that told us all about these planes was very good at his job and interesting as well, I can only listen to so much about planes and then my mind wanders on to who knows what??  It is the hugest plane and sort of has a shape like a stingray.  It is  faster than a speeding bullet.  Although he didn't really say how much the camera's could record lets just say, if you were in your back yard and you were scratching your a** and one of these flew over - the pilot would probably giggle.    Amazing how something that was built in the 1960's could fly this fast, this high and have that kind of camera capability.

This was me, wearing my new 7.50 pair of jeans, trying to land something on the moon in the space part of this museum. This place is huge, and there are hundreds of planes out side as well as 4 or 5 huge buildings with planes and displays in them.

 Don was my tour guide, he knows what all the planes are and what they do.  I did learn about carrier planes and also fuel planes.  Who knew that the planes got re-fueled while they were still in the air?  Probably everyone but me.

They asked everyone to put a pin on their home town.  See that little yellow one on Estevan?  - we did that!
Today we used another of our 2 for 1 admission coupons and went to The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.  This was of course my choice.  It was unbelievable!  I just loved it. It mostly showcased the plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert region.  Did you know that this is the lushest desert on earth?
I had read that there was a raptor display at 10 and was excited to attend.  The dopey GPS took us on the longest route ever and we were a little late so missed most of the owl presentation.  We did get to see the falcon and the red tailed hawk however.

These birds are basically in the wild but they have been trained to come to the trainers.  As they are supplied with an easy meal so they are pretty good with that deal.  As the day was fairly breezy it was more of a challenge for the birds to come in and land.  They basically flew right over our heads and landed in a dead tree or on the arm of the trainer.

The museum is mostly outside and alive. We saw many desert animals that I have never seen before.  Lots of them looked like they were not even fenced in.  When I first saw the javelinas and the coyote I was thinking, yikes these animals are really close to the people.  The fences are almost invisible and show the animals in a really natural environment.

We also saw an ocelot which was just a beautiful cat, and some javelinas but I could not get a good photo.

They had lots of beautiful gardens with many different ecosystems -  it is on 21 acres and has 2 miles of walking paths.  There was even a walk in Aviary

 This is a pyrrhuloxia,  I have been wanting to see one of these!

This is a stellar's jay, it was pretty tame - not to mention absolutely stunning.

These little hummers were in their own little aviary.  I didn't have much luck with the males, seems they were toovbusy chasing each other around.  It was easy to see the females just sitting relaxing and posing for pictures. They had 4 or 5 different varieties.

This was the prettiest little butterfly.  There were a few different species of them in a special are of the garden as well.

 No trip to the desert is complete without seeing a road runner!

I don't remember what kind of frogs these are, but there were a lot of them and they just sat there chilling.

Some nice cactus.

This was in the aquarium part of the museum.  These definitely do not live in the desert.  Don and I watched them for the longest time.  They are called garden eels.  They are about the size of a drinking straw and are really pretty colors.  They basically dig into the sand and then stretch up when some unsuspecting succulent morsel swims by.  There was a large angel fish in the tank and when she swam by they would all disappear.  Also one of these little eels was just nasty, he kept trying to bite the one in front of him.  Amusing!

A panorama shot of the  desert.
Well, we have quite a few things planned for the next few days, tomorrow we are going to a missile thing and a copper mine.  After that we will try to do as many botanical gardens as I can talk Don into and also a couple of state parks for some hiking and maybe a little bird watching.  Can't wait!