Photo of the day

See what happens when you don't water your garden? No, this isn't our back yard. Our weeds could never look this good. This is the outskirts of Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Ariz. Glenn is surrounded by a prehistoric landscape of just about every cactus variety Arizona is capable of supporting. Photo by Roni.


September 19, 2005
[Day 2] << Go to >> [Day 4]

Downtown Phoenix late Monday morning. Where's all the traffic? Skyscrapers like the ones at left aren't very prevalent in this modern city, and those that do exist are spaced far apart. Photo by Roni.


We fell in love with this rubber cactus attached to the antenna of a car parked in the Arizona government complex. Photo by Roni.


The argiculture department is one of the government office buildings near the state capitol. The Roman-style architecture is an eye-catcher. Photo by Glenn.


Well, you can't vacation with the Gehlkes and expect not to see a few state capitols along the way. This is Arizona's, located a few blocks from the heart of downtown Phoenix. There aren't many good photo angles unless you happen to have a fisheye lens. Which we don't. Photo by Glenn.


This statue atop the capitol dome is called Winged Victory. It is actually a weather vane. The copper dome was added when the capitol was restored a few years ago. It is made from 15 tons of copper donated by the state's mining industry. Photo by Glenn.


A barrel cactus blooms outside the capitol. Lovely to look at, but watch those thorns! Photo by Glenn.


This is Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, who has been bronzed along with his steed in honor of his role in founding the San Xavier Mission near Tucson. Ben seems duly impressed. Photo by Glenn.


The Arizona capitol complex has one of the best public art collections of any we have seen. This is the Arizona Peace Officer Memorial. Its base is in the shape of a six-pointed star like those worn by peace officers. On each granite face is carved the names of officers killed in the line of duty, dating back to 1870 or thereabouts. Photo by Glenn.


Roni was impressed by these flowering shrubs, which are unlike anything we have at home. Photo by Glenn.


Here's a closer look at those flowers Roni liked. She liked them so well, in fact, that she was hoping one of us would snare the little seed pod visible at right. We didn't. But even if we had, it's doubtful the California ag inspection folks would have smiled kindly on us for bringing it back to the Golden State. Photo by Glenn.


This 10-ton anchor is part of a large monument to the USS Arizona, which history remembers as one of the warships sent to the bottom of Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. This anchor was placed here Dec. 7, 1976. The ship it came from resides permanently in the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii. Photo by Glenn.


We're inside the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum, checking out the display of fluorescent crystals. These occur naturally and produce radiant colors when viewed under a black light. Photo by Glenn.


One of the perks of visiting the mineral museum is getting to hunt for rocks in the souvenir bin. Each visitor gets to take home three rocks. We donated our freebies to Ben, so he got to pick out nine. Photo by Glenn.


One of the best exhibits at the mineral museum was rocks arranged to look like dinner plates. Here we have what appears to be steak and carrots and peas, with perhaps a dish of peeled oranges on the side. Might want to trade in your knife for a tungsten carbide saw blade, however. Photo by Glenn.


Ben had a great time at the mineral museum. He let us get a photo of him standing outside the mural of the huge mining truck on the museum's wall. Photo by Roni.


A few hours later we have arrived at Saguaro National Park near Tucson. We aren't in the park yet, but we couldn't wait to get our first look at some of the cacti that grow right off the road. These "baby" saguaros are as tall as Ben is. Photo by Glenn.


Roni is a serious photographer and had no interest in posing next to the cacti, so we shot her staking out her next photo subject. Photo by Glenn.


Glenn, on the other hand, doesn't mind making a fool of himself. Here he is doing his best to imitate one of those giant saguaros behind him. Sorry, not quite green or prickly enough. Photo by Roni.


You want to talk about prickly? These saguaro needles look sharp enough, and guess what? They are. Photo by Glenn.


If you look at the saguaros long enough you'll start to pick out human-like features on some of them. Photo by Glenn.


This poor character looks a little stoned. Or perhaps it is trying out for a part in the casting call for the next sequel to "Night of the Living Dead." Photo by Glenn.


This is the sign marking the entrance to the Red Hills Visitor Center in the west side of Saguaro National Park. Photo by Roni.


On an observation deck behind the visitor center, this is what you get to see. The cactus forest stretches right up to the top of that hill. Photo by Glenn.


An elephant with long tusks? A headless boxer? What it looks like is surely open to interpretation. Photo by Glenn.


A few hours later, Roni is still working on that romance by lamplight. Photo by Glenn.


At the top of Signal Hill in Saguaro Park you'll find dozens of ancient Indian rock art drawings. We took the short hike to the top of the hill for a better look. Photo by Glenn.


It is getting late in the day and we are feeling a bit punchy after our long journey. Or perhaps it's just Glenn perfecting his "cactus pose" along the Signal Hill trail. Notice any similarities? Photo by Roni.


Two can play at this game. Ben's interpretation of this saguaro appears to be something like cactus ninja. Photo by Roni.


With mountains in the distance and a cactus forest in the foreground, this scene looks like all those cool postcards we kept seeing. Photo by Glenn.


Roni has made it to the top of Signal Hill and is enjoying the late afternoon view. Photo by Glenn.


Cacti and petroglyphs team up for another postcard moment in Saguaro Park. In fact, this same scene can be purchased on a 4x6" glossy from the park's gift shop. Photo by Glenn.


When I saw this fellow I commented that it looked a little "tired." But Roni pulled no punches. She said it looked "a little dead." Saguaros can live hundreds of years on very little water, but in the park you'll find them in various stages of the life cycle. Photo by Glenn.

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Cactus crazy

Monday, September 19, 2005 (Day 3) — The third day of our trip, and I can finally say that I feel like I'm starting to have fun. With the bulk of our getting-there driving out of the way, we spent a leisurely day seeing sights and generally spending a lot less time on the road. Ben probably doesn't think so, considering that he couldn't wait to get to the hotel this afternoon because he wanted to go swimming. But this was definitely an easy day compared to the previous two.

We did the continental breakfast thing at the hotel in Phoenix and were out of there by 9:30. Our first stop: a Fry's supermarket so we could pick up some drinks for the road and a bag of ice to keep them cool. This would be the same Fry's chain of stores that spawned the Fry's Electronics empire. We don't have any Fry's grocery stores in our area, so going into one was sort of a new experience. It probably best compares to WalMart — they have everything from basic grocery items to yard furniture. Most important to me was that they had a postcard rack, so I quickly added to my growing stack of Arizona cards. We also picked up some 2006 wall calendars. I guess our displays will have a Southwest flavor to them come January. Ben found a Megaman album for his battle chips that he just had to have, and both he and Roni found books to occupy the idle hours of the drive. The clerk at the register chatted us up about where we were visiting from. Guess she hit it off with Roni after seeing Roni's Jeff Gordon T-shirt. (Said her mom is a Gordon fan, but she twigs to Dale Earnhardt Jr. I say they were both losers this year, so we fans all share a common bond.) The clerk gave Roni her 10 percent discount because she was so shocked that we had neither a Fry's nor a Safeway club card. Sometimes it's the little things, you know? Saved us a whole four dollars or something close.

Next it was in to downtown Phoenix to seek out the state capitol. I had originally wanted to visit it yesterday, but when it got so late and we changed plans to stay in Phoenix instead of Tucson, I just sort of put it out of my mind. Roni seemed more interested this morning than I did, so I just went with the mood and figured what the heck, it would probably be a few minutes of pulling over, snapping off some frames on the camera, and zipping off to our next destination. That isn't quite what happened.

We reached the capitol complex around 10:30 after crawling through the downtown streets. As you come into Phoenix from the west, the streets intersecting I-10 are numbered from about the 600s down toward 1 as you reach the center of town. We're talking 40 miles out and you start to see stuff like 650th Avenue. It's a little creepy. Our hotel was just off of 25th Avenue. The capitol is located between 17th and 18th avenues. Just for the heck of it I drove all the way down to 2nd Avenue, figuring that I could hang a right on 1st Avenue and say we'd been to the heart of Phoenix. However, they don't call it that. What should be 1st was actually Central Avenue. Like the rest of downtown it's a wide boulevard with skyscrapers spaced at odd intervals along its palm tree-lined sidewalks. Very pretty. This is the first time I had been to Phoenix in 14 years and it didn't look much different than I remembered it. It is unlike any large U.S. city you'll see, in that the skyscrapers aren't all clustered together except in one small area of the downtown. This probably won't be the case 30 years from now. Also there isn't much traffic considering that we were there on a weekday morning. Reminded me of Houston and San Antonio.

We parked in the government complex across from the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum. The 2-hour parking limit for visitors seemed ideal. We'd just pop out of the car and take a short walk over to the capitol, grab our photos and run. We soon discovered that the capitol wasn't just on the other side of the parking lot as we had thought. It was actually through the parking lot, down the block, across the street and through a park. Doh! The walk was a bit more strenuous than planned, given that the temperature was already up around 95 degrees. When we reached the capitol I grabbed a few shots while Roni and Ben checked out the information booths set up by community service organizations around the capitol grounds. The capitol has a distinctive copper-colored dome with a white marble angel rising out of the top. I think it is supposed to be a representation of the Phoenix, but I'm not exactly sure. (My powers of observation haven't been up to snuff so far this trip.) The capitol mall is one giant memorial to just about every group you can think of. There are memorials to MIAs, fallen peace officers, and the seamen who died in the sinking of the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. There are statues to priests and explorers and founding fathers. I didn't investigate them thoroughly because I the heat was starting to do a number on me. Roni had it right when she said it was time for us all to go back to the car.

We came back past the mineral museum and were sucked in by the fascinating displays they had near the entrance of petrified wood, mining equipment and a steam-powered ore train. When we discovered it was air conditioned we went inside. When we found out it was two bucks for adults and that kids were free, we were hooked. This turned out to be a pleasant find and a great value for the money. There are several rows of display cases with very fine samples of crystals. Our favorite was a display of fluorescent rocks that put out brilliant colors when hit with a black light. In another display were rocks made up to look like plates of food. There was a plate that looked very much like pancakes with a slice of ham, eggs and a side of bacon. Ben liked the hamburger and french fries. Of course we had to stop in at the gift shop and scoop through a bin for free samples.

The only things that dragged us away from there were the fact that we wanted to get to Tucson before nightfall and the fact that we had overstayed our 2-hour limit on the visitor parking. There was no need to worry, apparently, because our hot car was waiting for us when we came out of that air-conditioned museum. By now it was 12:30 and the outside air temperature had topped 103 degrees. Yipe! We learned our lesson on the drive through the desert yesterday, however, so we rolled up the windows and hit the air conditioning for the drive south to Tucson. We rolled onto I-17 and followed it until it merged with I-10. As we escaped the suburbs the traffic thinned out and we were back to the familiar two-lane. The scenery through here is very flat, mixed with scattered cacti, farms and new housing construction. By the time we reached Casa Grande we were well ready for lunch. We lucked out and chose a place called JB's. We all ordered the salad bar, which turned out to be very good. Even Ben ate it all without complaining or wasting. It was a pleasant dining experience. While waiting to pay our bill, Ben played a mechanical crane game in the lobby and came away with a Tweety Bird doll on his first try. Lucky kid.

Our final stop of the day turned out to be our best. A few miles west of Tucson we exited I-10 in search of Saguaro National Park. Roni had read a lot about this place in her tour books and we were all looking forward to checking it out. Well, at least she and I were. Ben had gotten it into his head that because we were in Tucson we would be checking into our hotel and staying there for the rest of the night. He didn't understand that we had actually planned to sightsee a bit more before calling it a day. We drove about 13 miles until we reached the entrance to the park. Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by cacti of every variety, with a predominance of saguaro cacti. Those are the ones that grow up to 70 feet tall and have armatures that take on various shapes. It was incredible, like the stuff you see in all the tour guides and on postcards yet never seem to be able to see in person. We weren't even in the park yet and pulled over to the side of the road at the first convenient location to take pictures of ourselves amid the forest, or whatever you call a field packed with cacti. The temperature had come down a bit from its peak of 107 when we were in Casa Grande, now hovering around 95. It is monsoon season in these parts and the sky had been steadily darkening up the farther south we drove. We could actually see wisps of rain falling in the distance, but never felt a drop where we were.

We drove first to the Red Hills Visitor Center where we paid our $10 park admission fee and accumulated yet more souvenirs. From there we drove out on a 3-mile loop that took us through some of the most interesting areas of the park. I could only drive it at about three miles per hour because it was unpaved and tough on tires. The last thing I wanted was to puncture a tire, although it might have been a blessing in disguise if it had meant I would have to change the one that's been giving me grief on the freeways. The loop took us to a picnic ground where a walking trail led up a small hill to an exhibit of petroglyphs — or "rock art" as they call it here. At the top of the hill there was just an incredible vista of the valley floor, looking south toward a mountain range. The sun was beginning to set and we had lovely light for photos, although Roni will probably get better shots using her old 35mm Minolta SLR that she brought just for this sort of moment. It was a great time to tour the park because there was very little traffic for this late in the afternoon on a weekday. Walking down the hill and back to the car, all you could hear was an occasional bird or cricket hiding in the brush, and the sound of our son who doesn't yet appreciate the beauty of silence. It was easy to imagine what it would be like to be lost in this desert come nightfall. Not something I'd be anxious to try given the presence of scorpions, rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, tarantulas and other of a number of stinging or biting critters. We didn't encounter those on our visit, but I did see a chipmunk perched atop a cactus, and a kangaroo rat skittering about the rocks near the petroglyphs. Roni said she regretted not remembering to bring the Off mosquito repellant with us, and I said "What for? What mosquito could possibly live down here where there's no water?" Nonetheless, I did manage to pick up a bite or two from something. Not sure that it was mosquitoes, but who knows.

By the time we left Saguaro it was getting late in the day. We had enough time to complete the drive on I-10 and reach our hotel before darkness fell. Roni had reserved a room at the Comfort Inn in what the AAA guide described as "North Tucson." Turns out the place is part of a Holiday Inn and Red Roof Inn that sit side-by-side-by-side across from a Denny's restaurant, and unfortunately they were in the middle of replacing their carpets and mattresses. Not that the piles of rolled carpet and stacks of worn-out mattresses were an inconvenience to us in our room, but the presence of the workers and their vehicles combined with the piles made for some navigational hazards. Not to mention that the whole thing was an eyesore. But what the heck, it was free. Roni cashed in some of our frequent stay points we accumulated on last year's trip. We checked into Room 110 and immediately set our thoughts on what to do about dinner. We had passed a Texas Roadhouse restaurant on the way in on I-10, and being that we had fond memories of it from our visit to the one in Mesquite, Texas, we couldn't wait to give it another shot.

Texas Roadhouse is always popular, even at 7:30 p.m. on a Monday night. We reserved our table and weathered a 20-minute wait by going next door to check out the gift shop at the Cracker Barrel, which was considerably less busy. Returning to Texas Roadhouse, we waited the final 10 minutes while eating roasted peanuts (Ben's favorite activity because you get to toss the shells on the floor) and watching the Monday Night Football game between Washington and Dallas on the big screen TV. When we were finally seated we had another half hour wait for our meals, during which time poor Ben managed to spill his soda across the table. They gave him a free refill, which is standard fare here anyhow, and the rest of the meal was without incident. Problem was that it took so long between the appetizers and the main course that we were full midway through. 9 p.m. is pretty doggone late to be eating huge dinners while traveling, so we sort of staggered out of there when it was time to return to the hotel.

Ben really wants to go swimming. I have vowed to make that happen within the next couple of days, once we get to somewhere that we won't have to drive all afternoon to get there.

This page was last updated on Saturday, October 22, 2005 at 03:27 hrs.

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