Good bye Tucson 2014 - see ya in 2015

One of eight giant mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope

The weather at home is improving, the weather here is slowly heading to the 90s so it is now time to weigh anchor and start the long sail for home.  First let’s catch you up on the activities of our final week in Tucson.

The mass exodus from the resort began a week ago and the activities board has become a clean slate. The only activities being promoted here now have a 2015 date on them. God willing, we’ll be back here to take full advantage of most of them next year.

Where we once had 28 people showing up for hikes, we now have 10. The inevitable rhythm of life for an Arizona resort is on the down swing.

The polishing room

While my sister and brother-in-law were gallivanting all over Arizona this week Joan and I stayed home and began the process of buttoning up the trailer and eating up all the food left in the trailer. We are trying to leave no morsels for any small four-legged creatures to find after we store the trailer.

We are also leaving them a little surprise should they end up inside the trailer. Let’s just say it will be a “killer” surprise if they show up.

I did my best to find and seal up all the possible avenues of entrance into the trailer from underneath in case we get a return visit from the little mice.

An artist's view of the GMT

Joan did some laundry and we began storing linens, etc. for next year’s Arizona adventure.

On Thursday, our 15^th wedding anniversary Joan and I headed to the Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona. This is the world’s premier location for making the large (very large) mirrors that will be used on the next generation of telescopes.

The mirror lab is located next to and underneath the Arizona Wildcats football stadium and for good reason. The large size and weight of the mirrors requires some very heavy duty structure to mount cranes and other lifting equipment on.

Tombstone Courthouse

The tour took 90 minutes and was a fascinating look at the delicate and yet massive technology used to manufacture the next state-of-the-art view finders for the universe. The mirrors take four years to mold, polish and make. And they need to make 8 mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope scheduled to go online in Chile in 2020.

Once made the mirrors will be trucked to San Diego and then put on a freighter which will take them to Santiago, Chile where they will be loaded on another truck which will drive at the speed of a walk to the top of a mountain in the Chilean desert.

My sister at an original Tombstone bar

The area where they are going hasn’t had rain in 400 years and does not suffer from the light pollution that most other major cities do. The area is ideal for star gazing and when finished the Giant Magellan Telescope is expected to produce images 10 times better than the current Hubble telescope in space.

We watched as mirror no. 2 was being polished this morning. The tolerances are incredible. The mirror must be smooth to a millionth of an inch. The smoothness is like having an area 25 miles square with a deviation no more than a human hair. That’s some fine grinding.

My sister with the Earps and Doc Holliday (left)

Another mirror on the tour is one that was just recently molded and will begin the process of grinding when the current one is complete.

Joan has been wanting to see this place for a couple years so we scratched that off her bucket list today. My sister and brother-in-law arrived back in Tucson from their northern Arizona adventure late this afternoon, but are hanging close to their hotel room to rest up for tomorrow’s fun.

Joan made me hot dogs and beans for my anniversary dinner. Don’t feel badly for me it’s one of my favorite meals.

Friday started with the chores of returning our mail keys to the resort and arranging for our final electric meter reading and making sure that we are confirmed for our same spot next year. Check, check and check.

Pam with the McLaury brothers and a dead Clanton

At 10 a.m. we picked up my sister and brother-in-law at the Thrifty Car Rental place and headed for “The Town Too Tough to Die” – Tombstone, Arizona.

Once a semi-lawless copper mining town, today the town of Tombstone mines the dollars of tourists coming to explore its history – both the legends and myths. Funny thing about Tombstone, a town known for gun play, is that weapons are banned from just about everywhere in town. Nearly every store has a sign that says “No Guns Allowed.”

One of the many "no gun" signs

Although we have been to Tombstone three times previously, we did something new on this trip and visited the old Courthouse, which is now a museum. The museum, which was formerly the town’s courthouse, municipal offices and jail, includes a replica gallows to commemorate the seven men who were hanged there during the years Arizona was a U.S. Territory.

There was at least one other hanging, but that was classified as a lynching because it was done by an angry mob and not the sheriff. The man had been convicted of bank robbery and accomplice to murder, but was sentenced to a lesser fate of life imprisonment unlike his five co-defendants who were ordered hanged.

The replica gallows in the courtyard of the courthouse

Local citizens were so outraged by the verdict they stormed the jail, liberated the man and then strung him up on a pole in town. The term “frontier justice” comes to mind.

The courthouse included many historical objects and after touring that we headed to the “Shootout at the OK Corral” which is a perennial favorite of our visitors. Fortunately for Joan and I they show has been changed so we had a treat by seeing an all new re-enactment of the famous gunfight memorialized in books and movies.

It still amazes me that the re-enactment of a 30-second gunfight takes a full 40 minutes to do.

The actual gunfight site

Following the gunfight we headed to the famous Boothill Cemetery that is the resting place of so many restless former residents of Tombstone. Many of the graves are “unknown” but the research done by the locals show that many of the folks buried there met an untimely and violent end. Some from knives and guns, other from strange diseases – leprosy for two – and suicides.

We paid our respect at the graves of the McLaury brothers and one of the Clanton kin before heading home to a fine pork roast dinner prepared by Joan in the crock pot.

After dinner we headed to the finale of the weeklong visit of Pam and Jeff by heading to the Desert Diamond Casino for a performance by “The Doobie Brothers.”

Doobie Brothers concert

It was a rocking good time, but too soon it was over and it was time to take Pam and Jeff back to their hotel so they could rest up for an early flight on Saturday home.

We are excited that they are coming back to visit us next year.

Saturday morning started with a work out in the fitness center for me and then the sad task of packing for home.

We were going through guest withdrawal because of all the great fun we had with our relatives the last week so we decided to fill our afternoon with one last tour of something we had not seen before.

Joan at the Tucson Botanical Gardens

With our Tucson passports in hand (little books with coupons that give you 2-for-1 entrance deals at many local attractions). One of those we have been wanting to check out was the Tucson Botanical Garden.

Located near downtown Tucson this 5-acre garden includes several demonstration “back-yard” gardens, a wonderful butterfly house and just many beautiful cactus gardens. The cactus comes from deserts around the world. We spent about 2 ½-hours at the gardens and decided we would put this one the list of things to do when friends and relatives come to town.

It looks like it is a great venue for weddings and other functions. Mostly it was just a very peaceful way to spend our second to the last afternoon touring.

The entrance to the Gardens (Joan at right)

On the way home we filled up the Tahoe as we won’t be leaving the resort on Sunday.

Sunday I hit the gym and we headed to chapel services here at the park. We’ve missed the past two weeks so it was nice to be back but surprising how the crowd has shrunk with everyone going home.

After church we changed into our “Clorox clothes” – that’s what Joan’s mother called the clothes you do chores in – to begin the work of packing away all our stuff and storing the trailer tomorrow in Flagstaff.

Joan smelling the flowers

Joan did a final laundry and we took an inventory of what clothes we are leaving in the trailer and what we are taking with us home. I have a checklist of things that need to be done to make sure we don’t forget something or forget to lock something before we store the trailer.

By Sunday night we had the trailer hooked up, the sewer line and water line disconnected so all we have to do in the morning is pull the electrical plug from the service, raise the trailer stand, plug in the shore cord to the car and pull out. Plans are to depart the park at 4 a.m. insuring our arrival in Flagstaff by 9 a.m. for our 10 a.m. winterizing appointment at Camping World.

It’s always bitter sweet when this day comes, because we do love Tucson in the winter. By the time most of you will be reading this we should be at, near or on our way from Flagstaff to Bakersfield.

Hooked and ready tosail

The mountains hold a very strange attraction for me. Ditto for the desert.  Joan is slowly learning that attraction and there is a beauty to the desert that is hard for me to describe. It is an extreme environment that holds deadly, but wondrous plants and animals.

Even the cactus with its sharp and forbidding thorns suddenly spring forth with colorful flowers and buds that are in contrast to its injurious look. Joan is fascinated by the giant Saguaro cactus with their longevity and strange appendages. I will miss seeing the mountains as I rise and then again as I go to bed.

Our final 2014 Tucson sunset

We love our home in Michigan and realize that the inevitable swing of the calendar is drawing us home. The return trip will be a little longer than the one that brought us here and will include stops in Flagstaff, Arizona as well as stops in California at Bakersfield, Marina, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, Danville, El Dorado Hills and Auburn. All those stops will include visits with our west coast family and friends.

Then the long drive home with include overnights in Reno, Salt Lake City, North Platte, Nebraska, Iowa City and North Aurora, Illinois before a scheduled return to Michigan on Good Friday.

I’ll post again as I’m able but it may be a few days until I have time on the trek home.