The in-between season, between skiing and windsurfing, is a time when Amigoette and I branch out and try something entirely different.
The impetus for this year's trip was some free Alaska Air dollars. Kartcher Caverns near Tucson has been on our visit list since it opened to the public; Alaska flies there; and after lots of sleuthing and planning for other activities by Amigoette, we were off.
Our timing, going the first of June, the hottest month of the year in Tucson, was locked in by our schedule of going in-between sports seasons. Knowing it would be hot, we scheduled our activities to be inside, underground, or done hiking before the hot afternoons.
We toured Kartchner Caverns the first day and were not disappointed. It’s a living cave that still has flowing water and formations that continue to grow. The cave’s discoverers, land owner, and now the Parks Department have taken great precautions to keep the cave pristine and alive. You enter through 2 airlocks and a water mist (to keep lint attached to your clothes limiting algae growth on the rocks) into the dimly lit cave where the temperature is a constant 72 degrees and the humidity is 100%.
A paved trail winds through the cave as you travel from “room” to “room”. Each is full of stunning formations of rock precipitated from slowly trickling water over hundreds of thousands of years. In the quiet darkness, you can hear the dripping water that continues the growth of stalactites, soda straws, and solidified waterfalls of shiny, colored rock. Unfortunately, you can’t take pictures inside the cave, and the gift shop’s postcards didn’t do it justice. We committed the views to memories, images that can’t be explained with mere words.
On the way back to Tucson we got our first taste of desert fauna with an 8-mile drive through Saguaro National Park. An advantage to visiting in the hot season is that there were hardly any other visitors. We saw just a handful of other people and could stop just about anywhere on the loop road to walk or take pictures. The only wildlife we encountered besides birds and lizards was a family of javelinas snoozing in the dirt behind the park's visitor center. The tour by car was a good intro to the desert landscape for our upcoming hikes.
Next, it was time for some nerd fun as we visited the Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona. The mirror lab builds the largest telescope mirrors in the world – 28 feet in diameter. Current work in progress is a set of 7 mirrors that will function together on the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile that will be the equivalent of one 60 foot diameter mirror. The painstaking process to build each mirror takes nearly 3 years to complete, and they had three mirrors in-work while we there. The mirror starts with thousands of individually cut ceramic hexagons which are placed in the casting tool, creating spaces that the glass will flow into. Then softball size chunks of specially made, extremely pure glass are hand laid to cover the mold. The entire mirror is built on a turntable, and when ready for forming, walls are placed around it and a lid is place over the mold to form a spinning oven.
Over a month, the oven is slowly heated to 2,000 degrees. When the glass melts, it flows in between the ceramic molds, forming a hexagon backing structure. The spinning turntable forces the glass to flow up to the edges, creating a concave surface close to the final mirror shape. After another month of spinning cool down, the oven is disassembled and the mirror blank removed. Then a painstaking pressure jet spraying breaks up and removes the ceramic hexagons, leaving a glass blank that is thinner and lighter than a solid piece of glass which would distort under its own weight and the stress of temperature changes. The next year is spent grinding the surface to the final shape using a computer-controlled machine. The final surface is ground to the correct curvature within 1/2,000 the thickness of the proverbial human hair. Awesome science, especially for a manufacturing nerd.
To learn more about the desert, we spent a hot afternoon at the Sonora Desert Museum. The museum consists mostly of an outside trail where desert plants (aka cactus) are identified. Interspersed along the trail are indoor and outdoor habitats where you can observe the local fauna. Animals that would be very hard to find in the wild were easy to see up close in enclosed but natural environments. Mountain lions, birds, lizards, snakes (including at least 20 kinds of rattlesnakes), bugs, and hummingbirds - they have them all.
It seems every plant in the desert is sharp. We cracked each other up by reeling off cactus names like Forrest Gump's friend Bubba and his shrimp meals: "You got your Saguaro cactus, you got your Teddy Bear cactus, you got your Staghorn cactus... you got your Fish Hook cactus...". Once you get used to all the snakes, lizards, and insects that want to poison you and cacti that want to spear you, I was surprised at the number of beautiful birds and small flowers if you know where to look.
Hiking turned out to be a tough one. We thought starting early and ending by 10am would keep us out of the worst of the heat. Early starts did keep us out of the 100 plus degree afternoon sun, but our weenie northwest butts, acclimated to 60 degree days, were still kicked every day as the temperatures rose quickly above 90 as soon as the sun rose above the mountains. Our first hike was up Blackett's Ridge. We headed out from the trailhead about 7 a.m., which was a little later than we planned, but starting with a pleasant pre-sunrise walk through the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, we thought it was early enough. As we headed toward the ridge and the sun cleared the horizon, the scene changed. The sun was instantly hot, and as we had 2,000 feet of elevation to climb, it was obvious we weren’t in the Northwest anymore.
The only vegetation that didn’t want to stick long spines in us were the scattered Mesquite trees – an average height of six feet, a sorry excuse for a “tree” by our 150 foot Northwest fir standard. Not a shady spot to be found. It was a comical sight as Amigoette and I stood sideways in the one foot wide shade cast by a 30 foot Saguaro when we paused for a sweaty break and a much needed drink of water. Didn't see any critters other than lizards, but after we got down, we found handouts at the visitor center about some problems with mountain lions and what to do if confronted by one. Fortunately we didn't meet any along the way!
The next day we got an earlier start for a hike up Ventana Canyon. Starting at 6am, we followed a shady trail along the bottom of the canyon. Just as the sun cleared the ridge we arrived at the turnaround point of the hike after a 2000 feet elevation gain. It was much more pleasant hiking in the shade, although at 8:30am as we got to the top, the thermometer in my pack said 94 degrees. Along the trail we saw many more varieties of flora than we'd yet encountered, including some beautiful wildflowers. We saw lots of Agave Americana, a sharp leafed cactus which grows for 35 years, then shoots up a 25 foot stalk full of spectacular yellow flowers. Once the flowers are pollinated by swarms of flies and other insects, the Agave dries up, dies, and falls over.
Thirty five years for one sex act, then death, is nothing compared to the life of the Saguaro Cactus. The Saguaro lives 35 years before it starts to flower. At 75 years, it will grow its first arm. Mature Saguaros with many arms will be 125 to 200 years old, 35 to 50 feet high, and weigh 12,000 lbs or more. All out of a landscape dry as a bone most of the year and hotter than this human can handle. Awesome.
For more air conditioned Nerd fun, we went to the Pima Air and Space Museum. We started with the five large hangers full of restored planes of all kinds. Outside we wandered through 80 acres of more planes preserved in the hot, dry air. An unexpected find was one of only two YC-14s built – a state-of-the-art high lift cargo plane everyone was talking about just as I entered my aerospace career.
The highlight of our visit came while touring the 390th Memorial, a tribute to the airmen of the 390th Bombardment Group who served in World War II. We met a veteran, Richard Bushong, who had flown B17s
during the war, and he entranced us with stories about close calls on some of his bombing raids. He spent a total of 40 years in the Air Force. After B-17s in WWII at age 19, he flew supply planes in Alaska during the Korean war, then F-4 jet fighters in Viet Nam. Now 89 years old, he’s tall, slender, as articulate as could be. His face lit up when told us he got to fly one of the few remaining airworthy B-17s when he was 84. We felt lucky to be there on a day he was working as a volunteer.
On our last day/evening we headed up to Mt. Lemmon to visit the ASU Sky Center, where they offer evening programs to look through their 25 inch public viewing telescope. We allowed plenty of time on the drive up to sightsee, including a stop at Windy Point Vista (spectacular), Mt. Lemmon Ski Valley (funny), and a hike near the 12,196 foot summit. All the sights paled, though, when compared to the views of the universe we saw that night – a spectacular Tucson sunset, two nebulas, a galaxy, a binary star system, the moon, Mars – and the money shot, Saturn, its rings, and 15 moons.
You couldn't outdo nature in creating a landscape more different from Washington! But the desert around Tucson is beautiful in a very non-northwest way (more pictures). The town of Tucson, however, was disappointing. On an excursion “downtown” we found a 4 square block area with a few tall (6 story?) buildings, but none of the restaurants or stores we expected. Tucson is composed of main streets of strip malls radiating out from the center of town in all directions. We did discover many good restaurants as we cruised the strip malls – try the Carne Seca burritos. Restaurants were about the only place we saw the local population. With temperatures of 100 degrees, houses mostly sporting the heat and dirt of the desert for their yards, people hole up inside air conditioned comfort. Only the oldest parts of town had any landscaping (read organized cactus) or shade. We enjoyed our outdoor pursuits and felt like we'd arrived in a foreign land where they speak the same language and use the same money.
Summed up, our trip to Tucson filled our travel goal for "something completely different". Great trip – but good to be home in the green and temperate Northwest with our four different seasons.
Kkz
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Looking south from Fisher Hill Road bridgeThe first 1 ¾ miles of the trail have been regraded and graveled to smooth the old railroad line up to the Fisher Hill Road bridge that crosses the most spectacular section of the deep canyon. The spring runoff roaring through the extremely narrow rock walls is an awesome and scary sight.
Last week I went mountain biking up the trail. The trailhead to the 8 mile mark is a gradual 300 foot climb following the river shore. Once past the first 2 miles of regraded trail, the surface is mostly the old railroad base. Fist-sized crushed rocks embedded in the hard base make for a rough ride and smaller loose rocks on top keep your front wheel skittering around. Although the river is beautiful, unfortunately you must keep your eyes on the one worn line through the rocks much of the time. After an hour of steady riding, at mile 9, you start to see houses as the trail turns to a road and then continues into the town of Klickitat 4 miles further. That's where I turned around. The gentle downslope coming back makes pedaling easy, but by the time I hit the 4-miles-to-go-mark, all I wanted was smooth ground.
The 20-mile round trip made for a good biking workout, but my vibrated wrists and butt say I can't make it a regular drill. For walking, the trail is great both for short walks from the trailhead in Lyle or Fisher Hill bridge, or for longer hikes as far up the river as you want to go.
