1/31/18 Lunar eclipse

We got up early this morning to see the lunar eclipse.  I wish I had brought a tripod, but tried to steady the camera as I took some shots.  They came out better on the camera, but I will put one or two up for you.  We decided to drive towards (not into) the downtown area to catch several venues that were featuring fossils and minerals.  Our first stop was fantastic!  There were some wonderful fossils there.  Some of them were used in unusual ways.  We saw a few bathroom sink bowls that were imbedded with lots of fossils.  I'm sure that would make a very unusual and beautiful sink.  One of our favorites was a huge slab of petrified cottonwood made into a table (see pic).  I was only $90,000 and we were thinking of buying it (right!), but it wouldn't fit into our suitcase.  Some of the shops were very high end and I can't imagine who would have enough money to spend on these items.  We spent a few hours walking from one venue to another and then came home for lunch.  I walked to the store (about a mile each way) to get some envelopes for paying our bills.  I didn't have that on our packing list, but it will be there when we get home.  We don't have to be to work tomorrow until 12:30 so I think I will make some brownies tomorrow morning to bring with us to share.

It is too bad the eclipse pictures are so dark.  The first pic in the next set is of the pricey table.  Then was have some fish fossils, Dave standing next to a huge fossil and then a close-up of the crinoids imbedded in the stone.  The last pic is of an ichthyosaur (the dinosaur, not Dave).

1/30/18 Making lemonade out of lemons

We looked up some volunteer opportunities here in Tucson and fell back on our old stand-by: Habitat for Humanity.  We found a store, but here they call it a Habi-Store instead of a ReStore.  The manager, Charity, seems very nice and we will work 3 days: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  We had a tour of the store and layout, met a number of other volunteers, and got a general sense of how they work here.  They seem very organized and there is plenty of signage to help the customers find items of interest.  They have a lot of nice furniture here, but since we flew, we will not be taking any home with us.  We may look into something else to keep our minds and hands occupied, but we will see how the three day stint works for now.  We came home and had lunch and then drove out to a place called Picture Rocks where we found petroglyphs that were dated to 1200 AD.  The most interesting thing about them is that they all were on the west side of the rocks - some type of "religious" significance?  We will have dinner shortly and then read for a while before bedtime.  We will get up early tomorrow to watch the lunar eclipse and then let the day unfold.  There are so many places to explore.

1/29/18 Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Well, we had a bit of a disappointing day today.  When we started this whole process of volunteering with the desert museum, we started in May of last year and dealt with a woman named Allison, who seemed very excited to have us volunteer.  She said to contact her a month before we were to arrive, but when we did, it was another young lady who answered our email.  Apparently, Allison had left and Lauren was taking her place.  She also seemed excited when we re-explained what our plan was, but it must have been inexperience talking.  When we went to see her today, she said that everyone she talked to was not interested in having a volunteer for just a month as "it would take too long to train us".  I also think that because part of the museum is a zoo with desert animals, there are federal laws in place.  She did, however, let us in for free and gave us a voucher for a $5 lunch at the restaurant.  She said that there may be some volunteering available at the education center.  We went off and had a great tour of the museum (walked about 2 1/2 miles), stopped for lunch, and headed to the education center.  It appears that they could use someone for clerical work a couple of days per week, but since Dave doesn't do clerical, we politely declined.  We have some other ideas in the works and will look into one or two of them tomorrow so I will let you know what happens.

I have to say that the museum has changed greatly since 1985 when we stopped here with our kids.  As I remember, there was a walk through a cactus field with labels for the different types.  They may also have had a reptile room.  Now the place is huge!  The pictures today are all from the museum walk.  There is a chuckwalla (a foot long lizard), a Mexican tarantula (a the little bigger than the size of the palm of my hand), a grizzly bear cactus, long-eared bats hanging from the ceiling of a cave, a display of minerals found in Arizona, a coyote, some lovely purple flowers, an organ pipe cactus, a tiny hummingbird nest (about 2 inches in diameter), and a hummingbird trying to blend in with the branches of a small tree.

1/28/18 Gem and Mineral Show

There are 41 shows in and around Tucson for the Gem and Mineral Show.  We elected to go to one not too far from us instead of facing the traffic downtown at the convention center.  We found our way there - not easy with all the construction going on - and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  The exhibits were outdoors and we walked around chatting with people and viewing their tables of rocks and gems for sale.  One of the more interesting specimens was of a crinoid (a soft coral animal) encased in turquoise.  We have seen many crinoids over the years, but never one enmeshed in a semi-precious stone.  The same vendor also had a smaragdite (a fibrous mineral usually green in color) - the largest in the world.  It is 5540 carets.  The one next to it is the second largest in the world and is 3120 carets.  We also saw plenty of crystals, ammonites, fossils, arrowheads chipped from obsidian  and lots and lots of slab rock.  It was chilly when we got up this morning (39), but quickly warmed up to about 75.  On our way home we stopped to buy a few day's worth of groceries and then went home for lunch.  We took a little "feet off the floor" time and then went for a walk in the neighborhood.  We were delighted to see that most people here use gravel instead of grass.  Growing grass here would be an enormous waste of water.  Tomorrow we will go to the museum to meet with the volunteer coordinator.

1/27/18 Pulling Buffelgrass

We had a great night's sleep last night and got up early to get ready for our day.  We aren't really supposed to start our volunteer job until Monday, but we noticed that the museum was having a special event today to pull buffelgrass, which is an invasive species that crowds out the native plants and also is a huge fire danger.  We left a bit early as we weren't sure how long it would take us to get to the museum (it looks about a half hour) and met up with other like-minded people.  There was part of a Boy Scout troop (about 10 middle-schoolers) there earning volunteer hours.  There were also about fifteen of us civilians.  We were issued rock picks and other tools and off we went.  We had to walk close to two miles before we got to the area that needed cleaning.  The walk wasn't bad except for the climb up the rocky wash to get to out spot.  It was tiring work - mostly because we were on a fairly steep slope - hard on the legs.  By the time we finished at one, my legs felt like rubber.  We hiked back and were offered free entrance to the museum, but we were both bushed to elected to come home.  Once here, we were too tired to eat lunch so we both took a lovely nap and ate our packed lunches for dinner.  We will be doing a lot of reading here as we can't figure out the TV.  Seems to be a dish set up.  We are not complaining much as we both love to read - thank goodness we have our kindles.  Tomorrow is a day off so we are going to go to the Gem and Mineral show that is here until mid-February.  I took a few pics in the field to show you the bufflegrass and also took a few of the house where we are staying.  I am showing you both bedrooms (there are also two bathrooms) in case anyone wants to come to visit Tucson while we are here.

1/26/18 Tucson, Arizona

We caught an early flight out of Providence this morning and have arrived in our home-away-from-home here in Tucson.  Our flight from Providence to Chicago was uneventful except for a bit of turbulence as we were landing.  Our next flight, however, was a bit different.  We had a maintenance issue with the landing gear so we sat on the tarmac for a half hour or so until that was straightened out and then when we got to Tucson, we were coming in for a landing when all of a sudden we lifted off again.  The pilot came on and said there was another plane on our landing strip so he circled around and came back around for another go.  We had a long walk to the rental car place, but it actually felt good to stretch our legs after being confined to a seat most of the day.  We have a Toyota RAV4 and Dave is thrilled because it is bright red.  We found our home - very nice.  I will take pictures tomorrow.  We went out to dinner and having had no lunch, we were pretty hungry.  We then  did a bit of grocery shopping as we have to get up early tomorrow to go on a Buffelgrass pull and we will need breakfast and will have to pack a lunch.  I will tell you all about it tomorrow.  So just a short note to let you know that we arrived safely.  I think the temperature was about 70 this afternoon - quite pleasant.