Another Day in the Desert

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Thursday, November 8, 2012 – Another Day in the Desert

Another 6 a.m. wakeup call this morning; another breakfast of scrambled eggs with the best salsa in the world (made fresh in the hotel kitchen everyday); and another day of frizz-free living.  After three non-stop days of being bombarded with information and multi-sensory experiences, I’m ready to spend the day sitting out under the ramada beside the splashing fountain.  But that’s not on the schedule.  In less than an hour, we’re setting out for the foothills of the Catalina Mountains, where we’ll visit the gallery of the late artist Ted DeGrazia.  We’ll have lunch at El Charro, a longtime Tucson favorite for the cuisine of the Sonoran region of Mexico.  And then we’ll spend the afternoon at Sabino Canyon, located in the Coronado National Forest.  Following a scenic tram ride, those of us who still have the energy will hike back down the trail. 

Elliott has chosen to stay behind at the hotel today.  It’s probably a wise decision, considering that there wouldn’t be an opportunity for him to elongate horizontally.  If only he could get a new back.  But he’s relatively comfortable when he can stretch out periodically during the course of the day, and I’ve promised to take plenty of photos to share with him. 

I realize I haven’t written yet about our Tuesday and Wednesday activities.  Briefly, we visited a dude ranch, White Stallion Ranch, on Tuesday morning.  This must be an upscale dude ranch because they had a spa on the premises.  Lots of horses and western décor, and lots of dust.  I’ve now had enough dude ranch experience to last a lifetime.  

We had a totally different kind of experience on Tuesday afternoon when we visited the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, part of the University of Arizona.  I’ve never studied physics or optics, so it was hard for me to comprehend a lot of the information in our guided tour of the facility.  Nevertheless, it was pretty amazing.  They build parabolic mirrors for telescopes and they’ve developed a method that results in extremely powerful telescopes.  In fact, they built the world’s largest telescope, now atop Mt. Graham, which produces images 10-20 times better than Hubble’s at a fraction of the cost.  To give you an idea of how powerful it is, astronomers were able to get photos of planetary systems that were 162 million light years away.  Wow.  Of course, it takes a couple of years to produce the mirrors for these telescopes.  

Wednesday was another full day, starting a lecture by a naturalist and then a visit to the excellent Sonoran Desert Museum, where we saw a variety of desert plants and animals that have adapted to life in the desert.  

Prairie dog at the desert museum

Bighorn sheep at the desert museum

Costa's hummingbird in the aviary at the Sonoran Desert Museum

 Our afternoon was devoted to the mission of Xavier del Bac, the best example of Spanish colonial architecture in the U.S.  Of course, at one time, this area was part of Mexico.  The mission is located in the middle of the Tohono O’odham reservation, and as we approached, the white adobe church seemed to glow in the mid-afternoon sun, earning it the nickname White Dove of the Desert.  The mission was established by Father Kino in the late 1600s.  The interior of the church reflects the Rococo style of the period, i.e. every surface was covered with elaborate decoration so there would no room for the devil to get in.   After our visit, Gale and I shared a piece of fry bread sprinkled with cinnamon sugar – tasty, but another once in a lifetime experience.