winter in the desert part 3... Casa Grande

We headed to Casa Grande to spend a week with our snowbird friends Jack and Gail. Pretty tough life down there..... up by 10:00am, Lunch at noon, then 2:00pm pool time and 4:00pm happy hour. Might have to spend a month down there next year.

We visited the Casa Grande ruins... the remains of ancient people who lived and farmed here hundreds of years ago. the cover over the ruins is to protect and preserve the ruins. Pretty interesting place to visit.

If you will remember from our trip last fall, Gail was always getting into something. Well, nothing has changed! She just had to crawl through a small doorway in the ruins. How about those shorts and that tan..... Minnesotans eat your heart out!

No visit to Arizona would be complete without some cactus viewing. I love the Saguaro cactus....l each one is different than the last and all are spectacular.

Just had to include this one..... Jack saw some sand (like there is none in Arizona) and was pointing it out to Gail.... I think it was really a round tailed desert squirrel.

The last day we visited the Biosphere 2 project near Tucson. This was a two year experiment in the 90's to see if man could live in a self contained environment ( like a facility on Mars would need to be) Eight people (4 men and 4 women) were sealed in and the goal was a two year experiment. They made it 16 months before running out of oxygen. The facility is still used for research by the University of Arizona.

We're now in San Diego visiting Kevin and on Monday will head up to Pismo Beach then home.

Time goes way too fast doing this kind of thing. We go to Washington and Oregon in August.... more at that time.

Winter in the desert part 2

I think this falls under the heading of winter sports in Sierra Vista. Sharleen's brother Rick is adding on to his garage so..... time to get out the bobcat and get busy.
Rick was definitely having fun.... me ..... I was on the business end of a one lever Mexican backhoe (shovel) While he had more fun than I did, I still enjoyed our time and I got some exercise in the process.






Since this trip was mainly about family and friends I needed to include a picture of Sharleen, Her Mom, Aggie and Sassy the wonder dog. Can you tell who is who?






Sharleen celebrated her 29th birthday ( ya right)
while we were there. So... we went to a Greek restaurant and had a great meal with the whole family. Enough of this family stuff... on to Casa Grande!

Winter in the desert

This post has been a long time in getting done..... busy in the desert but here it is!

At the end of January we headed south to Quartzsite for a couple of days then on to Sierra Vista, Az. This is the little park where we park with the Huachucha mountians in the background. It's high desert (5000ft) and pretty anytime of the year

We headed to the Titan missile museum for a tour and some interesting information. This is one of 54 intercontinental ballistic missile silos which were operational from 1963 through 1983. As you can see there is very little above ground but lots to see underground.

53 of the 54 silos were destroyed in cooperation with the Soviet Union and this is the only one remaining. We headed down underground to the control room which is preserved in pristine condition. The guide did a simulated missile launch for us. Pretty crude electronics by today's standards.

The Titan 2 missile sits in the silo as it did when it was operational. This is looking up at the nuclear warhead and the top of the silo. If you are in the Tucson area I recommend a half day trip to the Titan site. I'll post this and continue later today.