Southbound Canucks: Visiting the Tucson area

April 2nd, 2013

Once we crossed the border at Nogales, we happily settled in at Lazy Days RV Resort for 3 days in Tucson. Lazy Days has been one of our favorite campgrounds as it has a great swimming pool and hot tub. The facilities are top rate...but so is the price. We limit our stay to a few days so that we don't put a big dent in the bank account.

From our base at Lazy Days, we took day trips to a couple of places in the Tucson area we had on our TDL (to do list) which is separate from our Bucket List. TDL isn't such a big deal.

April 3rd we visited the Biosphere 2 located at Oracle, AZ about 30 miles north of Tucson. Constructed between 1987 and 1991, the Biosphere was originally built to be an artificial, essentially closed ecological system by Space Biosphere Ventures. The first mission consisted of 8 people who were self-sustained within the Biosphere from September 26, 1991 to September 26, 1993. If you would like to read the detailed account, please use the following link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

The Biosphere was purchased in 2011 by the University of Arizona as an earth systems science research facility.

The artificial ocean included coral and fish, some originals still exist.

Tropical jungle area.

Another view of ocean, showing the beach.

The Bioshphere

The white dome is the "lung" which controlled air pressure within the complex.

April 4th we spent the morning on a tour of the Titan Missile Museum south of Tucson. The structure consists of 8 levels beneath the ground from the missile warhead at the top to the rocket engines at the bottom. We visited only the first and second levels on our general tour. An amazing place but not for the claustrophobic.

For more information click on http://www.titanmissilemuseum.org/

A former base commander leads the control room tour. We got to see the famous firing keys that never got used.

Umbilical connection to the rocket.

Looking up towards the warhead.

This is one of the security patrol jeeps.

Checking out the business end of the rocket engine.

Looking down into the silo.

As we left the museum we noticed the cacti were in bloom in the garden by the front doors.

Part of the cactus garden outside the office.

Flower of the barrel cactus.

A cactus flower.

There were several samples of this type of rock, Azurite and Malachite, on display at both the Biosphere and the Titan Missile Museum. The plaque below details this particular sample.

After lunch, we drove north from the east side of Tucson on the Catalina Highway (or the Hitchcock Highway) which runs up the Santa Catalina Mountains to Summerhaven at the top of Mt. Lemmon, It is a beautiful scenic drive up the curvy road to Mt. Lemmon. Within 38 miles (61 km) we drove from an elevation of 2389 ft to 9157 ft. We should have taken our ski jackets with us as at the top it was cool and there was still snow along the side of the road!