Tucson - The Desert Museum

This is another in a continuing series. The mornings are cool but as the day progresses the temperature increases. Layering is the standard approach, and we peel clothes as the morning progresses and then put on the vest, etc. in the evening.

There is a lot of wildlife in and around the museum. We spent an entire day there.

Pima Air & Space Museum

Our Tucson area trek included a visit to the Pima Air & Space Museum.

It's my understanding that Pima is the largest privately-funded, nongovernmental air & space museum. In the U.S. only the Smithsonian and The National Museum of the Air Force at Wright-Patterson are larger. Pima has a variety of military and civilian/commercial aircraft on display numbering  300+. It has several indoor hangars, plus outside walking tours (on your own or even via a tram).

We did the tram ride and it was most informative. It takes about an hour and I recommend it to get a wonderful overview of the outside exhibits. Our guide was a former Air Force pilot who described the aircraft and provided some very interesting anecdotal information. This allowed us to decide which to later walk to in order to get a better and more detailed view. Far too many aircraft inside and outside to post here, so here is a sampling.

We ran the lunar lander simulator and got scores of 13 and 15. We ended our tour with a walk on the moon!

There's ample parking and we were in the "overflow" lot which is also for RVs. We could have fit within the normal lot, but the walking distance was slight and so we decided to park with the Class A's.

After the tram ride we took a short walking tour on our own:

The museum includes exhibits of both fixed wing and rotating aircraft, and interactive stuff.

Original material:  https://roadtrek210.blogspot.com/

More Tucson Outdoor Photos

More photos from our Tucson area trek:

There's a busy bee in this photo:

Tucson Raptors

The Arizona-Sonoma Desert Museum has a wonderful raptors in flight exhibit. No cages, just free-flying birds and amazed onlookers. The raptors include a variety of owls and hawks:

This hawk flew just above my head; I was standing about three feet behind the handler. The photo was taken with a wide-angle lens and so this bird was much closer than it appears in the photo. She settled on a saguaro directly behind me.

One of the hawks took a treat to a nearby saguaro before returning soaring. At one time there were four hawks pirouetting and dazzling the crowd. On the day we attended the museum there were two raptor in flight shows. One in the morning and another in the afternoon. The morning had several owls and a red-tailed hawk. The afternoon had four hawks.

Arizona Hummingbirds

There are hummingbirds in the Tucson neighborhood, but they don't stay put for long. The Arizona-Sonoma Desert Museum was a wonderful place to view them nesting. We were able to sit on a bench and monitor a feeder. Here an attentive male looks on; the female was nesting a few feet away:

Tucson Rainbow

We took a couple of days to settle in, get to know our surroundings and meet some of the neighbors.

The day began at 50F with a wonderful rainbow and it just got better and better.

Roswell, NM 9 Degrees F

We finally had a break in schedules and headed toward Tucson. But winter was not going to loosen it's grip on us.

We left Illinois with mild weather, about 30F but as we headed toward north Texas we became aware that the weather was to change for the worse. By the time we arrived, the predictions were true and we arrived in north Texas on the tail of a really nasty storm which extended from Oklahoma in a southwesterly direction. We had an overnight reservation in Roswell, NM. But by the time we arrived the temperature was below freezing. We did have water in the inside tank of the RT210P. The exterior tank was winterized and I tossed some extra anti-freeze into the toilet and sink P-Traps for good measure.

We arrived in Roswell about 8:00pm and there was standing water in the town. We drove through and continued to our RV site.  I can hardly imagine the circumstances the next morning. Our RV site had about two inches of snow and a portion of the road at the office was a skating rink.

We did not have to retrace our steps in Roswell the next morning, and continued onward. When we arose it was 9 degrees F. The thermometer in our outside storage tray read 15F!

As we left the Roswell area the temperature continued to decrease, dropping to 0F before it began to climb.

Photos, January 22:

Photos, Roswell January 23:

Finally above freezing on January 23, Tularosa:

Arrived Tucson and sun!