Tucson!

We left this morning for Tucson. We got away a bit later than expected, there was a van parked in the road in front of our place that had been there for at least 20 minutes when we left. (We hung around a while to see if he would leave and even drove around the block after we left to check him out.) I called the police on the way out of town to ask them to check the vehicle out, just in case it was a bad guy looking to rob us. Turned out the guy said he was watching HIS house because he thought someone was going to rob it! Strange story, wonder if it was true?

Here's sunrise this morning as we were loading up to leave.

And here's the sun hitting the volcano field west of town.

We stopped to stretch at a park in Mammoth. Love the mining display there! The faces on these two sculptures are kind of freaky, they look like they are frozen in screams of eternal torment! Makes me glad I'm not a miner! Have to trust me on this one, the faces can't be seen clearly in the photo.

The closer we got to Tucson the warmer it got and it was in the 80's by the time we got there. Quite a shock to our systems that are still in winter freezing mode! The high ended up at around 91, I think. Charles took us to see this train at the Southern Pacific museum. The train is usually locked in a cage and it only open for a few hours each Saturday. We got to walk around the train and see it minus the distraction of the bars! Cool. We also visited the inside museum while we were there. Charles told us that this train was a movie star! It was in the movie Oklahoma!


From the museum we headed for the UofA and visited Alan at the Museum and toured with him. We got to ride up an ancient elevator and see Alan's collection of the jugs made by Andrew Watson for Utah's Centennial. He made a different one for each county in Utah and Utah has a lot of counties! We've got a couple of them, Davis and Kane Counties. We also visited the Ice Age display, the Salvadore Corona display and the Pottery Room.

Later this evening we drove to the Ft. Lowell Museum and Historic Site. The museum was closed, but we got to see the site of the old fort. John is standing on the porch of the museum

and this is Cottonwood Lane, originally planted in 1873, shortly after the fort was established. The trees made the fort an oasis in an otherwise barren area. After the fort was abandoned, the trees died and were cut up for firewood. They have been replanted as they originally were.