Thursday, March 30, 2006
Arizona Update
Thursday night here, and just a quick update on our Arizona adventures.
On Tuesday we woke up to a little light rain and overcast skies, which is not quite what we were expecting for dry, desert, Arizona. The hotel brought breakfast to our door (coffee, juice and muffins) and we headed west to the Sonora Desert Museum. As soon as we got there the skies cleared, the rain stopped and the sun came out, just in time for us to see lots of cactuses, and a selection of desert-based wild animals:
The Sonoran Desert Museum
Looking west over the desert
Arizona sky
Hawk on a Cactus
Coyote
Garden of cacti
Good advice
In among the cactuses
Puma (Mountain Lion)
On Wednesday we headed south and drove right down to the old mining town of Bisbee which is right on the Mexican border. we also stopped off at Boot Hill and the town of Tombstone to catch up on some of our Arizona cowboy lore.
Boot Hill cemetary
"Hanged by Mistake"
The OK Corral, today
Main Street, Tombstone
Today we took it a bit easier, just sitting in the sun by the pool and going for a walk along the Rillito River (pictures soon). Got a little sun-burned too, which makes a nice change from Calgary!
Tomorrow we're planning on heading down to an old Spanish mission church just south of the city and maybe stopping in at an artists' colony further south. Then on Saturday we're heading for Phoenix and then flying home again on Sunday.
That's all for now, but here's a few extra pictures from our trip so far:
Welcome to Arizona!
GPS unit in the car
Aircraft carrier in San Diego
Hotel view in San Diego
See you soon
J&P
(0) comments
On Tuesday we woke up to a little light rain and overcast skies, which is not quite what we were expecting for dry, desert, Arizona. The hotel brought breakfast to our door (coffee, juice and muffins) and we headed west to the Sonora Desert Museum. As soon as we got there the skies cleared, the rain stopped and the sun came out, just in time for us to see lots of cactuses, and a selection of desert-based wild animals:
The Sonoran Desert Museum
Looking west over the desert
Arizona sky
Hawk on a Cactus
Coyote
Garden of cacti
Good advice
In among the cactuses
Puma (Mountain Lion)
On Wednesday we headed south and drove right down to the old mining town of Bisbee which is right on the Mexican border. we also stopped off at Boot Hill and the town of Tombstone to catch up on some of our Arizona cowboy lore.
Boot Hill cemetary
"Hanged by Mistake"
The OK Corral, today
Main Street, Tombstone
Today we took it a bit easier, just sitting in the sun by the pool and going for a walk along the Rillito River (pictures soon). Got a little sun-burned too, which makes a nice change from Calgary!
Tomorrow we're planning on heading down to an old Spanish mission church just south of the city and maybe stopping in at an artists' colony further south. Then on Saturday we're heading for Phoenix and then flying home again on Sunday.
That's all for now, but here's a few extra pictures from our trip so far:
Welcome to Arizona!
GPS unit in the car
Aircraft carrier in San Diego
Hotel view in San Diego
See you soon
J&P
Monday, March 27, 2006
This is Arizona calling...
Hello from sunny Tucson, Arizona!
We're down here on a wee break which we tacked on to the end of a brief visit to San Diego, where I was giving a talk at the Society of Surgical Oncogy last weekend. San Diego was lovely and warm, and is right on the Pacific coast - it was good to be beside the sea again. The hotel was excellent, with a big pool and a hot-tub, and the local restaurants were great too (we ate in a different place every night - fish, Italian, Thai and Persian respectively!)
We hired a car at San Diego airport and then headed east over the mountains up into the interior of California, before descending into the deserts and crossing over the border into Arizona. The navigation was made a lot easier by the fact that the car comes with a built-in GPS unit which seems to be accurate to within a few feet and tells you exactly when and where to turn!
We spent last night in a dusty border town called Yuma, which is right on the Mexican border and is where the Colorado river comes down and leaves the US. We spent today driving east again, 240 miles through the Sonoran Desert which is full of cactuses (cacti?) and tumbleweeds. We were even attacked by a tumbleweed on the highway! We also saw a tyre blow out on an RV on the highway and the hard shoulders are littered with fragments of tyres from previous blow-outs! The temperatures were up to 85F, which is about 27C, in the desert.
We are now sitting in our suite in a small hotel on the northern outskirts of Tucson (Windmill Suites)- we have a view overlooking the courtyard, the pool and the hot-tub. It's still pretty warm here - 25C at the moment, at 5pm. We are planning to use Tucson as a base for daytrips over the rest of the week - places like Tombstone, the Sonoran Desert Park, Bisbee and maybe a wee trip to the Mexican border, before heading north to Phoenix at the weekend. We'll try to make a brief blog entry most days to let you know what we are up to and include pictures too!
Love
J & P
(0) comments
We're down here on a wee break which we tacked on to the end of a brief visit to San Diego, where I was giving a talk at the Society of Surgical Oncogy last weekend. San Diego was lovely and warm, and is right on the Pacific coast - it was good to be beside the sea again. The hotel was excellent, with a big pool and a hot-tub, and the local restaurants were great too (we ate in a different place every night - fish, Italian, Thai and Persian respectively!)
We hired a car at San Diego airport and then headed east over the mountains up into the interior of California, before descending into the deserts and crossing over the border into Arizona. The navigation was made a lot easier by the fact that the car comes with a built-in GPS unit which seems to be accurate to within a few feet and tells you exactly when and where to turn!
We spent last night in a dusty border town called Yuma, which is right on the Mexican border and is where the Colorado river comes down and leaves the US. We spent today driving east again, 240 miles through the Sonoran Desert which is full of cactuses (cacti?) and tumbleweeds. We were even attacked by a tumbleweed on the highway! We also saw a tyre blow out on an RV on the highway and the hard shoulders are littered with fragments of tyres from previous blow-outs! The temperatures were up to 85F, which is about 27C, in the desert.
We are now sitting in our suite in a small hotel on the northern outskirts of Tucson (Windmill Suites)- we have a view overlooking the courtyard, the pool and the hot-tub. It's still pretty warm here - 25C at the moment, at 5pm. We are planning to use Tucson as a base for daytrips over the rest of the week - places like Tombstone, the Sonoran Desert Park, Bisbee and maybe a wee trip to the Mexican border, before heading north to Phoenix at the weekend. We'll try to make a brief blog entry most days to let you know what we are up to and include pictures too!
Love
J & P
