After a quicker breakfast at the hotel restaurant we headed to the PIMA air and space museum. We spent most of our time outside in the bitter cold. Dad served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, so he was very familiar with many of the planes, and even had stories about riding in a few of them.
Here is dad first showing us the entrance that he (and everyone on board) had to use to hoist themselves up into one of the bombers. A few seconds later he changed his mind and determined that the real entrance portal had been sealed up and the hatch you can see here is actually the bottom ejection port.
I must be getting to be a softie after living in Los Angeles because I was dying walking around in 45 degree weather with blistering winds. We were out there about an hour and it turned my core into an ice cube and made my nose run for the next seven hours.
Dad and I got onto a bus and took the tour of the “boneyard” on the grounds of the Davis Monthon Air Force Base. The tour was kind of interesting, but it would have been much cooler to be able to walk through the acres of “dead” planes. Since it was a base though we weren’t allowed off the bus.
After we came back we decided not to brave the cold to see the rest of the planes on display in the outdoors at the museum. We’d seen most of them the first time around though. We decided to head back into town to eat lunch at East Coast Super Subs.
The sub ingredients were good as cherry peppers were sprinkled on, but the bread was cookie cutter. We also ordered onion rings, which were decent.
After lunch we weren’t sure what to do, so we headed to Saguro National Park and drove around the nine mile loop. We got off at one point and walked across a few rocks, but nobody was up for doing much more as the wind was still blowing and the sun, covered by clouds, was starting to hang lower and lower.
We then drove a few miles up Mt. Lemmon and turned around as the sun went down. After about the second mile of going up the hill the rocks looked fantastic for climbing, big and chunky, very solid with little vegetation and great variations of color from gray to yellow to green to stark white. There were many small streams that would normally run down the mountain, but in the winter go dry and would make for a great craggy climb up the mountain. However, the wind was blowing even fiercer on the mountain and the light was starting to fade. Cars behind us coming down the mountain that had gone farther up were covered in snow. We didn’t bother to step outside.
After returning to the hotel I tried to warm up my core with a dip in the strange bathtub/spa thing in our bathroom. To finish the day mom and I walked around the college hangout, 4th street, looking for something to eat. We walked past a plethora of bong and hydroponics shops and settled on a wrap and smoothie place.
