Our RV Adventures

Today was our last morning with our friends, Al and Adrienne, before we left Tucson for 3 days in Gila Bend, AZ.

And, of course, it started pouring down rain last night and it was still coming down this morning. But since I had a head’s up from the Weather Channel, I went ahead and did as much as I could last night, including hitching up the truck.

But I still got soaking wet finishing up unhooking the utilities and the satellite system.

But first, we had a final breakfast with our friends Al and Adrienne at the resort restaurant. Since we were already hitched up, they were nice enough to pick us up at our rig.

As I mentioned earlier, we first met Al and Adrienne up in Fairbanks, AK in 2008 and became fast friends. Adrienne asked this morning why I thought we all became such good friends. I said it was because we were all weird.

She seemed surprised and ask how we were weird. I said we climb in a big box on wheels and travel from Alaska to Newfoundland and back. We don’t always know where we will be tomorrow night, and we like it that way.

Apparently some people just can’t handle this.

The other important thing is that your spouse has to be your best friend. Things are just too close to have it otherwise.

And I’m very lucky in this respect. Jan has been my best friend for almost 43 years now, and I would still rather be with her than to do anything else.

Anyway, we said our goodbyes to Al and Adrienne and got underway a few minutes before 11am. We had a great time visiting them and they went out of their way to show us the sights of Tucson, along with some great eating.

We’re going to try to see them later this summer when they will be up in Washington state.

We pulled into Holt’s Shell RV Park in Gila Bend, AZ about 1:15pm, and just in time too. We got their last site. Lucky us. We last stayed here two years ago on our roundabout way to Fairbanks, AK, and really like this park. And it’s only $10 per night using Passport America. What a deal!

We’ll be here until Wednesday so I can finished up some projects on the rig that were hampered by the cold and rain we had for last three weeks in Houston.

After that we’ll head on over to Yuma to get ready for the Gypsy Rally starting March 8th.

Later this afternoon we over to Sofia’s Mexican Restaurant for what Jan describes as the best Shrimp Burrito she’s ever eaten. We ate here two years ago and Jan’s been talking about them ever since.

More Tomorrow…

Our friends, Al and Adrienne, picked up as about 10am and we headed over to the Pima Air and Space Museum.

Arriving at the museum, we found that the landscaping followed some of the planes inside.

First we have the Fishhook Barrel Cactus.

Next we have Saguaro Cactus.

And then, of course, the Stealth Cactus!

I guess you had to be there.

This is a BD-5J MicroJet, the world’s smallest jet plane. And it was a kit!

Another kit, Burt Rutan’s Long EZ.

The Starr Bumble Bee, the world’s smallest plane.

The McCullough Super J-2 Gyrocopter

The HoppiCopter. I’d really like one of these.

It’s a big leap to the SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest plane in the world.

The A-10 Warthog ground attack plane.

A Beechcraft Bonanza. My uncle used to have one of these.

The Grumman F7F TigerCat.

The B-52. This one is one of 2 configured to carry the X-15 aloft.

This is the Douglas MB-1 Genie air to air missile. And it contained a NUCLEAR! warhead. It was to be launched into the middle of Russian bomber formations and take them all out at once.  Jan’s father used to work on these when he was in the Air Force. It’s amazing how small they can make an atomic bomb.

This is B-57 Canberra bomber. I used to work on these. I was amazed to find that it had BUICK! jet engines in it.  Who knew Buick even made jet engines.

The Convair B-58 Hustler, American’s first supersonic bomber.

The Cessna T-37 jet trainer. I also used to work on these.

The RA-5C Vigilante. In its original configuration as the the Navy A-5 bomber, it had a novel way of dropping its nuclear bomb load. It spit it out the tail!  So many jokes, so little time.

NASA’s Super Guppy. It’s amazing that this thing could fly.

The Convair B-36 nuclear bomber. It had 10 engines, 6 prop engines and 4 jet engines!

At this point we took a break and went down the road to a great little Mexican place called Poco and Mom’s.  And the food was great.  My Green Chili Chicken Enchiladas was the best I’ve ever had.

Coming back to the museum, we began touring some of the displays. This is the Altair 8800 computer, probably the first practical home computer. It was a kit and was my first computer.

This is a photograph of Grace Hopper’s logbook showing the first computer ‘bug’.  It was a moth that got caught in a relay, and is the origin of the term ‘computer bug’. This was from the time when computers filled whole buildings.

This is a Grumman F-4U Corsair of ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep” fame.

This is a German V1 ‘Buzz Bomb”.

The ‘Columbus’, a updated version of the Grumman J2F-2 Duck.

After a great time at the museum, we headed back to the park, passing Davis-Monthan AFB, America’s aircraft boneyard. Thousands of  aircraft are mothballed here.

This satellite photo shows just a small portion of the planes stored there.

On the way home, we stopped by Fry’s Supermarket to pick up some groceries. Fry’s is Kroger’s here in Arizona.

This is our last full day here in Tucson. Tomorrow we’re heading over to Gila Bend for a few days before moving on to Yuma.

More tomorrow…