Sightseeing in the Tucson area

The landscape around Tucson is stunningly beautiful. The mountains. The cactus. Aaaaaaah. Here are some photos I took while I was there.

Mission San Xavier del Bac:






Saguaro National Park:



I didn't notice until I saw the photo above later that a cactus skeleton had photobombed my shot (that thing that looks like an arm at the right). I was so focused on the late afternoon light that I didn't notice the skeleton at all. I suspect it would have made a more interesting photo than the prickly pear, but I have only a bit of it.


It was a lovely afternoon and I really enjoyed not being the driver for a day.

Mountains North of Tucson:



Pima Air and Space Museum:

Land sharks! Not really, just a lot of parked old planes seen from the car window as we drove by. This is the place I'm most likely to want to visit if I do more sightseeing in Tucson. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apalachicola and Tupelo honey

Image
The fog thickened and the air cooled after I left Mexico Beach headed for Apalachicola, but soon after I arrived at this charming little town, the sky cleared and the sun came out to make a crisp, cool afternoon for taking a walk. The town Christmas tree was still on display down by the waterfront: I had started to think about Tupelo honey when I was considering staying overnight in Tupelo, Mississippi, back when I started planning this trip. Everything I knew about Tupelo honey is that there's an old song that talks about it. When I hunted up the youtube video for Tupelo Honey, the only part of it that sounded at all familiar was the hook.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klSQUdPTU0A  My guess is that it's one of those songs I only know about because of the ads for collections of hits that used to play frequently on TV when I was a teenager. They would play the hook of each song then move to the next one. It left me with the impression that I knew the songs when I'd
Read more

It's crop dusting season! (And apparently blue fruit loop season too)

Image
In Arkansas I saw two crop-dusters on the same day, both flying back and forth over the highway I was on. One passed no more than 20 feet in front of me, and maybe 10 feet over me. With those distances, it sure looks like the plane is headed straight for me... The second also was headed my direction but the timing was a little further off, or possibly just as close but behind me instead of passing right in front of me. The first one was an ultralight, and looked a lot like this (only bright yellow):  http://www.zenithair.com/stolch701/pic09/crop-spray.jpg and the second looked more like a regular small plane. When googling for crop dusting images, I was surprised how many of them were related to articles about crashes. Glad I didn't see that before I saw the planes headed toward me! I think that the people who stayed in my hotel room prior to me in Jonesboro, Arkansas were professional hotel housekeeping testers. The housekeeping staff at the hotel failed the test, but I passed!
Read more

Pipeline under construction: Seismic crew ahead

Image
Driving across Western Texas, I was reminded of how I used to think that someday I wanted to cross an ocean on a ship to get a sense of how big it actually is. Now I'm not so sure about that. Without landmarks to gauge speed by, how would I really get a sense of the ocean? I'd know how long it took, but would I really be able to perceive speed and distance? I have enough experience with flying to get a sense of how big an area is by how long it takes to fly over it in a commercial airplane, and I definitely get a sense of it by driving, but I'm not sure I could really grasp speed and distance if all I can see in every direction for days on end is ocean. Western Texas feels kind of like the ocean for a little while. I only drove about 3 hours to get from Pecos to San Angelo, but while I was in the desert with no towns in sight, it felt huge. I have a map of Texas that lives in my mind and I know how little of the state I actually saw compared to that whole map. What I did
Read more