Visitors and Activities
Visitors
February and March have seen many visitors to Arizona. In addition to Jane’s friend Kathy, from Illinois, Jane's Mother, Helen spent 10 days with us. Unfortunately, she took a fall at a gift shop in Madera Canyon but luckily was not seriously injured. Arthur’s sister Patti and her husband Kevin arrived in Green Valley in early March and his other sister, Susan, came shortly thereafter. Patti and Kevin stayed in their RV in the Green Valley RV Park while Susan stayed with us. Susan went with us to Carlsbad, CA, for a week at our timeshare there and a visit to Jane’s brother Joe and his family. We did San Diego, including the zoo, and Coronado Island and its famous hotel.
Wendell, Lisa and their two boys Blake and Cole spent a couple of days. They particularly enjoyed the Sonoran Desert Museum (the boys are very high on snakes at this point in their lives).
Other visitors included Anne Buddenhagen, from Hofstra University, and her husband Frosty; Paul and Karen Overland, friends from last year’s golf Elderhostel (it was that Elderhostel that brought us to Green Valley and led to our having a place here now); and Patty and Mark Smallsread from Chicago.
Seeing the Sights
There is a lot to do here. We experienced many things, but still have much more to do in future years. We are already looking forward to February for a more in depth tour of the Tucson Gem & Fossil Show and more events at the Rodeo, which is called La Fiesta de Vaqueros here. Other activity highlights in the area for us and our visitors have been:
• Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson, the #1 must do, has something for everyone (not just snake lovers). The Hummingbird house was the most popular with our guests – especially seeing hummingbird babies in the nest. The restaurant has been very popular, too, especially its cilantro pesto.
• Driving to the top of Mt. Lemmon, just north of Tucson and rising over 9000 feet. As you ascend from the 2300-foot altitude of Tucson, you pass from desert to deciduous to pine forest; it’s like going from Mexico to Canada. Scars of a forest fire several years ago remain. The little town of Summerhaven near the summit was largely burned down and new homes are rising; it’s near the southernmost ski area in the country and has that ski-resort town feel. The temperature was almost 30 degrees cooler at the top than it was in Tucson. No skiing this year due to the drought – the first snow didn’t arrive until March.
• Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley provides an up close and personal look at remnants of the Cold War. Visitors get to go into the control room of a real ICBM silo and learn how they prevented any accidental firings while ensuring that the missile could be fired even after taking an almost-direct hit.
• .Pima Mine Tour shows how copper mined here in Arizona – the largest producer in U.S. Green Valley has huge mountains of mine tailings all along its western border. The equipment displayed at the mine is gigantic – 4-story high trucks with tires 10 feet tall. Amazing.
• Many visits to Tubac, where “history and art meet”. Not only does it have great shopping and golf, it is close to Wisdom’s Café (the big chicken restaurant) which has the best Mexican food we found.
• Animal watching is also a major activity. It can be done right from our patio because our place backs up to an arroya, a kind of animal highway. We see rabbits, Gambell’s quail, and hummingbirds and all sorts of other birds daily; javelinas almost daily; a roadrunner occasionally, as well as owls and hawks; and also occasionally a bobcat.
In addition to all of the sightseeing, Jane managed to do some work and ride about 300 miles on her bicycle. Arthur continued attending an informal Spanish conversation group. We both made good progress in our yoga thanks to an excellent teacher and also earned our free tee-shirts for completing the minimum 3 hikes with the Sahuarita Hiking Club.
Weatherwise, we finally had some precipitation, though we are still in a drought and nowhere near where we should be. Snow predictions here are given in altitude: for example, snow down to 3000 feet means anything above that altitude will have snow while below will be rain. Our mountains, the Santa Ritas, had two snow events while we had rain—quite lovely to look at. There was still snow on Mt. Lemmon when we went there on April 1. The ski resort on that mountain never opened this year because they had no snow at all until the last month or so.
Pictures of some of these activities and people can be seen at our website in the section called Feb-April 2006
February and March have seen many visitors to Arizona. In addition to Jane’s friend Kathy, from Illinois, Jane's Mother, Helen spent 10 days with us. Unfortunately, she took a fall at a gift shop in Madera Canyon but luckily was not seriously injured. Arthur’s sister Patti and her husband Kevin arrived in Green Valley in early March and his other sister, Susan, came shortly thereafter. Patti and Kevin stayed in their RV in the Green Valley RV Park while Susan stayed with us. Susan went with us to Carlsbad, CA, for a week at our timeshare there and a visit to Jane’s brother Joe and his family. We did San Diego, including the zoo, and Coronado Island and its famous hotel.
Wendell, Lisa and their two boys Blake and Cole spent a couple of days. They particularly enjoyed the Sonoran Desert Museum (the boys are very high on snakes at this point in their lives).
Other visitors included Anne Buddenhagen, from Hofstra University, and her husband Frosty; Paul and Karen Overland, friends from last year’s golf Elderhostel (it was that Elderhostel that brought us to Green Valley and led to our having a place here now); and Patty and Mark Smallsread from Chicago.
Seeing the Sights
There is a lot to do here. We experienced many things, but still have much more to do in future years. We are already looking forward to February for a more in depth tour of the Tucson Gem & Fossil Show and more events at the Rodeo, which is called La Fiesta de Vaqueros here. Other activity highlights in the area for us and our visitors have been:
• Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson, the #1 must do, has something for everyone (not just snake lovers). The Hummingbird house was the most popular with our guests – especially seeing hummingbird babies in the nest. The restaurant has been very popular, too, especially its cilantro pesto.
• Driving to the top of Mt. Lemmon, just north of Tucson and rising over 9000 feet. As you ascend from the 2300-foot altitude of Tucson, you pass from desert to deciduous to pine forest; it’s like going from Mexico to Canada. Scars of a forest fire several years ago remain. The little town of Summerhaven near the summit was largely burned down and new homes are rising; it’s near the southernmost ski area in the country and has that ski-resort town feel. The temperature was almost 30 degrees cooler at the top than it was in Tucson. No skiing this year due to the drought – the first snow didn’t arrive until March.
• Titan Missile Museum in Green Valley provides an up close and personal look at remnants of the Cold War. Visitors get to go into the control room of a real ICBM silo and learn how they prevented any accidental firings while ensuring that the missile could be fired even after taking an almost-direct hit.
• .Pima Mine Tour shows how copper mined here in Arizona – the largest producer in U.S. Green Valley has huge mountains of mine tailings all along its western border. The equipment displayed at the mine is gigantic – 4-story high trucks with tires 10 feet tall. Amazing.
• Many visits to Tubac, where “history and art meet”. Not only does it have great shopping and golf, it is close to Wisdom’s Café (the big chicken restaurant) which has the best Mexican food we found.
• Animal watching is also a major activity. It can be done right from our patio because our place backs up to an arroya, a kind of animal highway. We see rabbits, Gambell’s quail, and hummingbirds and all sorts of other birds daily; javelinas almost daily; a roadrunner occasionally, as well as owls and hawks; and also occasionally a bobcat.
In addition to all of the sightseeing, Jane managed to do some work and ride about 300 miles on her bicycle. Arthur continued attending an informal Spanish conversation group. We both made good progress in our yoga thanks to an excellent teacher and also earned our free tee-shirts for completing the minimum 3 hikes with the Sahuarita Hiking Club.
Weatherwise, we finally had some precipitation, though we are still in a drought and nowhere near where we should be. Snow predictions here are given in altitude: for example, snow down to 3000 feet means anything above that altitude will have snow while below will be rain. Our mountains, the Santa Ritas, had two snow events while we had rain—quite lovely to look at. There was still snow on Mt. Lemmon when we went there on April 1. The ski resort on that mountain never opened this year because they had no snow at all until the last month or so.
Pictures of some of these activities and people can be seen at our website in the section called Feb-April 2006
posted by arthurandjane at 6:10 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home