Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Vacation in Tucson, Arizona: My Third Visit! (March 11 - 15)

Last month, I managed to get away from the office and spend a few days visiting a good friend and his wife who live in Tucson, Arizona. Making this trek to Arizona has become a tradition of sorts with my now having visited Tucson three times over the past three years!!


The iconic view of Arizona!! Lots of cactus - and all are protected by state law! If you build a house, you MUST pay to relocate each cactus.

The highlight of this year's visit came the very first day (Friday, March 12) when my friend drove me up to Mt. Lemmon. We lucked out in that last week the road leading up to the summit was closed because of heavy snow. This day, however, the weather was perfect: sunny, blue skies - great picture taking weather!! On the road up to Mt. Lemmon we passed this unusual rock formation - I call it the "Indian Head" rock as it resembles an American Indian - or so I imagine based upon the old movies of the 1950s.

Cactus, cactus and more cactus!!

Spectacular views abound along the scenic road up to Mt. Lemmon!

Near the summit at Mount Lemmon - elevation about 9,000 feet.

The Sky Island road leading up to Mt. Lemmon.

Have no doubt, the snow was DEEP! Thankfully, the road surface had been cleared and so there were no slippery driving conditions to worry about at all during the drive up to the summit. Near the peak was a ski lift and hundreds of skiers. We had lunch at the Iron Door restaurant. Good food ..... but we had to wait about 20 minutes before being seated.

On Saturday (March 13) my friend and I drove to Tombstone, Arizona (almost a 2-hour drive from Tucson). We purchased tickets ($10.00 per person) for a 30-minute reenactment of the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral!

The gunfight show was, well, OK. A bit silly but who cares. It ended with a BANG - several in fact! True to the actual historical record of the by now legendary shootout, the gunfight itself lasted less than about two minutes!

The actors who played Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and the other "good guys".
Last stop: on Sunday (March 14), we visited the petroglyphs at Signal Hill. Excellent outing - highly recommended.
Now that you have made it this far through this posting, please visit the last three postings - all made in the past week or so. With this posting, I am finally caught up with all my recent travels. Hope you enjoy the photos! Comments are welcome .... and sought after!!!

PS: I've made several postings over the past few weeks and have yet to receive any comments from my loyal followers. If anyone out there has the time, I'd really appreciate seeing your comments! Do you like the photography and my dialog with each posting? Just curious. I naturally want to keep my blog of interest to as many of my followers as I possibly can! Thanks in advance for your time!

3 comments:

Searching Soul said...

These are wonderful pictures you took, Chemist. Thank you for sharing these. How I wish I can also visit those places. I think your pictures of Azaleas and Magnolias are magnificent.

chemist said...

Searching Soul:

Thanks so much for taking the time for searching for my blog again! It's been a bit lonely over here lately with only a few comments received after all my recent postings. Glad to hear someone out there in the blogosphere is enjoying my photos. Yes, Tucson and Paso Robles were fun places to visit. Hope you too can make it to one of those fine destinations in the future.

By the way, your last posting had some fine flower pictures! Keep up the great work and please keep in touch!

Traveling Chemist

Melody said...

Looks like it's been over a year since you posted the pictures of Mt Lemmon. Just happened to be doing a search for pictures to send friends in Sonoma county and I saw you lonely blog. Will have to check out more of it, but wanted to tell you great pictures!! Are you still traveling to distant places?