Many Days

March 15, Saturday Bisbee
The mining town of Bisbee use to be the largest city between San Francisco and St. Louis with 20, 000 people in 1900; today – 6,000 but many of the buildings remain. We went to check it out. The locals claim that the town has the same climate as central Michigan. Those locals are transplants to serve the booming tourist industry because mining is no longer happening there.
After the city, we went rural and walked the San Pedro River valley.


March 16, Sunday Snow storm and shame
The 9,000 Catalina Mountains with its summit ridge called Mount Lemon form the north side of the Tucson basin. It’s the “Mount Erie” of the area with a road to the top for skiing and communication towers. Also is the village of Summer Haven with cabins to escape from the 112 degree summer heat of the low lands. We went to check it out. The weathercast for the day was for a storm dropping down from the Pacific Northwest. As we headed out clouds were lowing covering the top of Mount Lemon. Be the time we reached 8,000 feet (Tucson is at 2,200 feet) it was snowing with limited visibility. At 8,500 we entered Summer Haven and I was shocked. The north side of the mountain had burned several years back wiping out the cabins and trees in the small valley near the summit. The shock and shame was the new mega houses that where being constructed in the middle of the nude landscape. Sick, really sick.
By the time we entered the summit parking lot the snow was coming down in sheets. The road down was being covered quickly but it wasn’t a case of just heading back down. The road goes down several hundred feet then climbs back up before descending to the distant basin floor. That going up before going down was a concern but we were in my Jetta and I wasn’t sweating it. We got without trouble. Next day’s newspaper said that the summit got five inches that afternoon.



March 17, Monday Pima Air Museum
In the dark aftermath of the storm we drove the 40 minutes to the largest collection of aircraft in limbo in the world at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (known as “DM” locally). Planes, mostly military are brought to Tucson to be stored until needed again, re-fitted, parted out or destroyed. The Air Museum is associated with the storage lot of 4,000. They just opened the place up a tour bus so we went to see what I’ve seen many times flying in and out of Tucson. A lot of metal.