Arizona trip report
Jul. 16th, 2004 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertLengthy report of my trip to Arizona follows. If it seems like there is a lot of detail about the air travel, keep in mind that my next vacation is a week spent camping at OSH for the Experimental Aircraft Association’s big air show.
My trip to Arizona began with very early morning trip to General Mitchel Airport. There is very little traffic at four in the morning. Once there I flew on a CRJ 700 to O’Hare. We were behind a light single-piston-engine plane for takeoff. There was a brief pause before takeoff to let him get out of the way of our much faster jet. My impression, as a passenger, is that this airplane features powerful engines. Acceleration at takeoff and the initial rate of climb seem quite impressive. My girlfriend noticed this, too, in her travels.
Flying a jet from Milwaukee to Chicago is almost silly. You look out the window at Milwaukee, then almost immediately you see, I don’t know, Kenosha or something, and then, well, there’s Chicago. They said our altitude was 8,000 feet, and even with the 250 knot speed limit below 10,000 feet this is a very short trip, flown just offshore over Lake Michigan. I did not see any piston singles at ORD....
Something I don’t understand at the larger airports is some of the stores in the terminals. I understand restaurants, of course. Travelers will need to eat. Stores selling books, magazines, and newspapers make perfect sense. There isn’t much to do but read. I don’t understand the luggage stores. Travelers need luggage, but once you have checked your checked baggage and cleared the security screening, is it not a bit late to be purchasing luggage? Jewelry? People buy that at airports?
At O’Hare I boarded an MD-80 for the trip to Tucson. The highlight of this leg of the journey came as we descended near Tucson and skimmed through the cloud tops, with mountains, spires, and canyons of white fluff all around, the shadow of the plane occasionally visible in the clouds below, and the occasional white-out as we penetrated a wall of white. If you haven’t done this, it is every bit as beautiful as you might imagine.
My mother met me at the Tucson airport. We went to the funeral home to pick up my father’s ashes and an urn, or, actually, a gold-colored metal box. We stopped at a casino on the way to Green Valley for lunch. They have a good restaurant, but we had the buffet, which was unimpressive. Casinos are fascinating, in a way. The place could not possibly be tackier. Flashing lights, bright, clashing colors, and irritating vaguely-musical noise from all the machines. A woman smoking while losing money in a slot machine standing next to a women on oxygen losing money in a slot machine.
We drove to Phoenix on Thursday and stayed two nights at the Marriott Mountain Shadows resort. In Phoenix in July, Mountain Blinding Direct Solar Glare Resort might be a better name. Someday in the distant future there may be a vacation resort on the planet Mercury, and then you will be able to get more sun than Phoenix gets. It is a very nice place, and, in late June/early July, which is decidedly the off-season for tourism in Phoenix, you can get a very good rate. The resort features a good restaurant and several very nice swimming pools.
My brother David and his wife Suzy also arrived on Thursday, as did Joe Helsing, who worked with my father in the Air National Guard and took over Dad’s job of head maintenance officer when he retired. Our families went on a vacation together, in Milwaukee, of all places, when I was about five years old, but I have no memory of that. This was the first time I met Joe as an adult. He had a lot of stories about work in the old days, which were very interesting. Dad retired when I was eight, so I never knew all that much about what he did. By the time I was old enough to understand he’d been retired for years.
My cousin Michele flew in from California on Friday for the day. I’ve seen her at some of the family gatherings over the years, but, at twenty years older than me, growing up she was just another adult. I gather cousins are often closer in age than that. She grew up before Dad married and had children, and they had a good relationship. He spoiled her, I’m told.
The National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona is beautiful. We had a very simple ceremony, with a brief reading, a recording of Taps, a rifle salute, and some remarks by Joe and Michele. This was the saddest, most emotionally difficult time, not surprisingly.
Back in Tucson at Mom’s house I got put to work. We bought a TV and a VCR/DVD player. I changed the smoke detector batteries, the air filter, the water filter, cleaned the bugs out of the light fixtures, poisoned weeds (although the weeds didn’t seem all that effected by the poison), washed the car, and probably some other things I forget.
On the fourth of July my mother, her friend and traveling companion Joan, and I went to a tiny fireworks display at Tubac. I’m not used to long pauses between shells. There were hundreds of spectators. I’m more used to hundreds of thousands of spectators. I do have to admit that parking and traffic were not problems.
We went to Madera Canyon on Tuesday. I climbed much of the way up the Super Trail toward Josephine Saddle. Mom did not have the urge to do that, and stayed in the trail head picnic area. I saw exactly zero other people in four hours of hiking, which was really nice.
On Wednesday we visited the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, home of the now-6.5-meter MMT telescope. The visitor center is at the base of the mountain and the tour involves a bus ride up a 20km, winding, one-lane, mostly unpaved road to the 2626 meter summit. The view out of the bus window is either of rock walls or something reminiscent of the view out of an airplane. The tour is quite extensive, and visitors spend quite a bit of time in the domes of the 1.2 and 1.5 meter telescopes, the outside of the IOTA interferometer, and in the 6.5-meter MMT’s, um, shed. The whole, square, building rotates with the telescope, which is on an Az-El mount. It is said that one of the first telescope operators parked too close to the building and plowed his own car right off of the mountain top with the building, which is especially embarrassing for a telescope operator, who ought to know about the rotating building. We also spent time at the 10m Gamma-ray Telescope, a very interesting thing to see. With the telescope in it’s idle position, the building rooftop from which calibration work is done puts you in the right spot to see a giant reflection of yourself in the 10-meter array of mirrors. The view from the mountaintop is amazing. You can see Kitt Peak, some 80km away. You can see Paul Allen’s house.
Thursday was Pima Air & Space Museum day. They have about 250 aircraft on display. Obviously, this I had to see. We took a tram tour around the outdoor displays. They have a KC-97, which my father worked on for many years long ago. Those have been out of service for a long time and I’d never seen one. The aircraft are in variable condition, some of them in quite poor condition. It’s great to see some of the unusual aircraft, whatever their condition, but I’m used to seeing aircraft at Oshkosh, which are, having flown there for the week, if not in beautiful show condition, at least in flying condition. They have a B-29 in beautiful condition indoors in one of the hangars. That was worth seeing. We also took the AMARC (Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center) tour. This is the famous aircraft storage area, popularly know as the “boneyard,” where aircraft are stored, sometimes restored to service, sometimes stripped for parts and recycled. The tour consists of a ride through the base on a tour bus. You are not allowed off the bus, but anything you can photograph through the windows is fair game. Thousands of aircraft are arrayed out on the very hard and dry Tucson “soil.” (The area’s dirt looks more like concrete than soil to someone from the Midwest.)
On Friday we intended to go to the Cochise Stronghold, but we discovered that, my map’s indication of pavement notwithstanding, the road leading to it is unpaved. Since the Monsoon season was starting and the occasional severe thunderstorm was occurring, we decided that it would be a better idea to avoid dirt roads. They don’t even design the paved roads for rain out there, since it doesn’t rain often. We visited the Amerind Foundation museum. They have a wonderful collection of native American pottery and baskets. They also have a very beautiful picnic area. The route we took to the museum passes through the spectacular Texas Canyon. We also stopped at the beautiful and peaceful Holy Trinity Monastery in St. David.
On Saturday I flew back to Milwaukee. There were Arizona Air National Guard F-16s taking off and arriving at the Tucson airport while I waited for my flight, a ride on an MD-80 to Dallas-Fort Worth. We again had the chance to see low clouds from above and thunderstorms in the distance. Dallas-Fort Worth is a huge airport. I had about three hours there, and had a fairly decent meal. I also saw some Boeing 777s through the terminal windows. The ride to MKE was on another CRJ 700, way up at FL370 (37,000 feet). More thunderstorms in the distance, and a spectacular sunset. I also had the delight of a window seat and no one in the aisle seat beside me. As we descended over Milwaukee with the sunlight fading, the lights of the city shown brightly. No wonder there are no stars visible in the sky here compared to Green Valley. Joyce met me at the airport and I spent the night with her.
My trip to Arizona began with very early morning trip to General Mitchel Airport. There is very little traffic at four in the morning. Once there I flew on a CRJ 700 to O’Hare. We were behind a light single-piston-engine plane for takeoff. There was a brief pause before takeoff to let him get out of the way of our much faster jet. My impression, as a passenger, is that this airplane features powerful engines. Acceleration at takeoff and the initial rate of climb seem quite impressive. My girlfriend noticed this, too, in her travels.
Flying a jet from Milwaukee to Chicago is almost silly. You look out the window at Milwaukee, then almost immediately you see, I don’t know, Kenosha or something, and then, well, there’s Chicago. They said our altitude was 8,000 feet, and even with the 250 knot speed limit below 10,000 feet this is a very short trip, flown just offshore over Lake Michigan. I did not see any piston singles at ORD....
Something I don’t understand at the larger airports is some of the stores in the terminals. I understand restaurants, of course. Travelers will need to eat. Stores selling books, magazines, and newspapers make perfect sense. There isn’t much to do but read. I don’t understand the luggage stores. Travelers need luggage, but once you have checked your checked baggage and cleared the security screening, is it not a bit late to be purchasing luggage? Jewelry? People buy that at airports?
At O’Hare I boarded an MD-80 for the trip to Tucson. The highlight of this leg of the journey came as we descended near Tucson and skimmed through the cloud tops, with mountains, spires, and canyons of white fluff all around, the shadow of the plane occasionally visible in the clouds below, and the occasional white-out as we penetrated a wall of white. If you haven’t done this, it is every bit as beautiful as you might imagine.
My mother met me at the Tucson airport. We went to the funeral home to pick up my father’s ashes and an urn, or, actually, a gold-colored metal box. We stopped at a casino on the way to Green Valley for lunch. They have a good restaurant, but we had the buffet, which was unimpressive. Casinos are fascinating, in a way. The place could not possibly be tackier. Flashing lights, bright, clashing colors, and irritating vaguely-musical noise from all the machines. A woman smoking while losing money in a slot machine standing next to a women on oxygen losing money in a slot machine.
We drove to Phoenix on Thursday and stayed two nights at the Marriott Mountain Shadows resort. In Phoenix in July, Mountain Blinding Direct Solar Glare Resort might be a better name. Someday in the distant future there may be a vacation resort on the planet Mercury, and then you will be able to get more sun than Phoenix gets. It is a very nice place, and, in late June/early July, which is decidedly the off-season for tourism in Phoenix, you can get a very good rate. The resort features a good restaurant and several very nice swimming pools.
My brother David and his wife Suzy also arrived on Thursday, as did Joe Helsing, who worked with my father in the Air National Guard and took over Dad’s job of head maintenance officer when he retired. Our families went on a vacation together, in Milwaukee, of all places, when I was about five years old, but I have no memory of that. This was the first time I met Joe as an adult. He had a lot of stories about work in the old days, which were very interesting. Dad retired when I was eight, so I never knew all that much about what he did. By the time I was old enough to understand he’d been retired for years.
My cousin Michele flew in from California on Friday for the day. I’ve seen her at some of the family gatherings over the years, but, at twenty years older than me, growing up she was just another adult. I gather cousins are often closer in age than that. She grew up before Dad married and had children, and they had a good relationship. He spoiled her, I’m told.
The National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona is beautiful. We had a very simple ceremony, with a brief reading, a recording of Taps, a rifle salute, and some remarks by Joe and Michele. This was the saddest, most emotionally difficult time, not surprisingly.
Back in Tucson at Mom’s house I got put to work. We bought a TV and a VCR/DVD player. I changed the smoke detector batteries, the air filter, the water filter, cleaned the bugs out of the light fixtures, poisoned weeds (although the weeds didn’t seem all that effected by the poison), washed the car, and probably some other things I forget.
On the fourth of July my mother, her friend and traveling companion Joan, and I went to a tiny fireworks display at Tubac. I’m not used to long pauses between shells. There were hundreds of spectators. I’m more used to hundreds of thousands of spectators. I do have to admit that parking and traffic were not problems.
We went to Madera Canyon on Tuesday. I climbed much of the way up the Super Trail toward Josephine Saddle. Mom did not have the urge to do that, and stayed in the trail head picnic area. I saw exactly zero other people in four hours of hiking, which was really nice.
On Wednesday we visited the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, home of the now-6.5-meter MMT telescope. The visitor center is at the base of the mountain and the tour involves a bus ride up a 20km, winding, one-lane, mostly unpaved road to the 2626 meter summit. The view out of the bus window is either of rock walls or something reminiscent of the view out of an airplane. The tour is quite extensive, and visitors spend quite a bit of time in the domes of the 1.2 and 1.5 meter telescopes, the outside of the IOTA interferometer, and in the 6.5-meter MMT’s, um, shed. The whole, square, building rotates with the telescope, which is on an Az-El mount. It is said that one of the first telescope operators parked too close to the building and plowed his own car right off of the mountain top with the building, which is especially embarrassing for a telescope operator, who ought to know about the rotating building. We also spent time at the 10m Gamma-ray Telescope, a very interesting thing to see. With the telescope in it’s idle position, the building rooftop from which calibration work is done puts you in the right spot to see a giant reflection of yourself in the 10-meter array of mirrors. The view from the mountaintop is amazing. You can see Kitt Peak, some 80km away. You can see Paul Allen’s house.
Thursday was Pima Air & Space Museum day. They have about 250 aircraft on display. Obviously, this I had to see. We took a tram tour around the outdoor displays. They have a KC-97, which my father worked on for many years long ago. Those have been out of service for a long time and I’d never seen one. The aircraft are in variable condition, some of them in quite poor condition. It’s great to see some of the unusual aircraft, whatever their condition, but I’m used to seeing aircraft at Oshkosh, which are, having flown there for the week, if not in beautiful show condition, at least in flying condition. They have a B-29 in beautiful condition indoors in one of the hangars. That was worth seeing. We also took the AMARC (Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center) tour. This is the famous aircraft storage area, popularly know as the “boneyard,” where aircraft are stored, sometimes restored to service, sometimes stripped for parts and recycled. The tour consists of a ride through the base on a tour bus. You are not allowed off the bus, but anything you can photograph through the windows is fair game. Thousands of aircraft are arrayed out on the very hard and dry Tucson “soil.” (The area’s dirt looks more like concrete than soil to someone from the Midwest.)
On Friday we intended to go to the Cochise Stronghold, but we discovered that, my map’s indication of pavement notwithstanding, the road leading to it is unpaved. Since the Monsoon season was starting and the occasional severe thunderstorm was occurring, we decided that it would be a better idea to avoid dirt roads. They don’t even design the paved roads for rain out there, since it doesn’t rain often. We visited the Amerind Foundation museum. They have a wonderful collection of native American pottery and baskets. They also have a very beautiful picnic area. The route we took to the museum passes through the spectacular Texas Canyon. We also stopped at the beautiful and peaceful Holy Trinity Monastery in St. David.
On Saturday I flew back to Milwaukee. There were Arizona Air National Guard F-16s taking off and arriving at the Tucson airport while I waited for my flight, a ride on an MD-80 to Dallas-Fort Worth. We again had the chance to see low clouds from above and thunderstorms in the distance. Dallas-Fort Worth is a huge airport. I had about three hours there, and had a fairly decent meal. I also saw some Boeing 777s through the terminal windows. The ride to MKE was on another CRJ 700, way up at FL370 (37,000 feet). More thunderstorms in the distance, and a spectacular sunset. I also had the delight of a window seat and no one in the aisle seat beside me. As we descended over Milwaukee with the sunlight fading, the lights of the city shown brightly. No wonder there are no stars visible in the sky here compared to Green Valley. Joyce met me at the airport and I spent the night with her.
