hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3790.txt

Episode: 3790
Title: HPR3790: Tucson, Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3790/hpr3790.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 05:22:28

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,790 for Friday the 10th of February 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Tucson Part 2.
It is part of the series Travel.
It is hosted by Aoka, and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
We continue our month long stay in Benson, a town just southeast of Tucson.
Hello, this is Aoka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in my ongoing travelogue of our RV trip to the southwest of the United States.
And we're still in Tucson because we spent a month in that area.
And oddly enough, it did not run out of stuff to do.
So on Monday, January 24th, today is warmer, sunny, and very little chance of rain, so
we decided to go to Suara National Park, picking the part on the west side of Tucson.
The east part is closer, but since we got an early start, it made sense to do the longer
drive today.
When we got there, we were told that the King Canyon Trail is the most popular, but
we doubted we could park our big truck there.
Our truck is big.
It's larger than a pickup truck.
So we went to the other side of the park and hiked on the Cendero Esponza Trail.
Now this goes up into the mountains, but we only went as far as the point where it started
to get steep, and the trail was rocky and uneven.
My knees are not up to rocky and uneven, at least not much of it.
Then we came back, and then we walked down the Dobie Wash Trail for a bit.
But it was all downhill, which meant returning would be all uphill.
So once we convinced ourselves it was never going to level out, we turned around and went
back to the truck.
We did pass someone riding a horse, which is one of the things you can do in that area.
So we had a good two hours of desert hiking, and then did some shopping on our way back
to the RV.
Tuesday, the 25th.
I used the Google Map Skills I learned.
We talked about that earlier, to create a map with all of the city of Tucson locations
we were interested in, with pins stuck in the map, and then added a few other pins just
outside of the city.
Then I added the theater where we had tickets.
We had bought tickets to go to a theater on January 25th.
So that was the one fixed thing that was in there.
And then since that's an evening thing, we found a Golden Corral restaurant right on the
way for dinner.
With that, we set out to hit a lot of places that we wanted to see, but which were not long
stops that would take a significant part of the day.
So these were the little half hour, 45 minute stops that you might want to make, and let's
just combine a bunch of them.
So we started by going to the San Xavier de Bac mission just south of the city.
In the southwest, you're going to run across these missions that were established by the
Spanish when they were colonizing the area, it was a nice place to visit.
You know, 30 minutes is quite sufficient for that.
Then we drove into Tucson to the Saint Augustine Cathedral.
You know, frankly, having been to Europe a few times, it was not a big deal as cathedrals
go.
We could have skipped it, but it was on the list of sites we found online.
Again, we spent about 30 minutes here.
Now from here, it was just a few blocks to the El Presidio Historic District.
We walked around for about an hour, first through a part of the neighborhood devoted to
arts and crafts, and then to the part with the homes of the wealthy.
It was just a neighborhood, but one with the older homes that reminded us that we were
in the southwest.
Now at this point, we looked for a library so I could print out our ticket for the theater.
We found one about five minutes away and got that done, and discovered the restaurant I
had picked out was literally next door to the library, talking about dumb luck.
And the Reed Park Zoo was just a couple of blocks away, and we had some time to kill,
so we went there.
And when the zoo closed, we went for a walk in the park around the pond, and we'd done
so much walking by this time.
We went back to the truck and just sat for half an hour to rest up a little, and it was
time for dinner.
While there, we got into a conversation with three other ladies there when one mentioned
growing up in Detroit and another mentioned Buffalo.
All right, now we live just outside of Detroit now, and when I was younger, my family lived
in Buffalo or just outside of Buffalo.
So we had stuff to talk about.
It was fun talking with them, but at 6.30, it was time to get going to the Gaslight Theater,
which was like five minutes away.
They do a musical comedy show, and the main show was Arizona Smith and the Relic of Doom,
which is a spoof of Indiana Jones.
They had a great three-piece band and did a lot of songs with dancing as part of the show.
As an example, when the heroine announces her determination to get back with the hero,
they break into Aintno Mountain High enough.
Now this show was two acts, and the band played in the intermission between acts.
Now following the conclusion of this play, they did a spoof country music review hosted
by someone playing Roy Rogers, and with appearances by the sons of the pioneers, Patsy
Klein, Johnny Cash, and three Dolly Partons.
It was all a lot of fun, and we recommend them highly if you're ever in Tucson.
We had a great time, that was a really nice evening.
But after a very long but full day, we got back to the RV and in bed by 10 pm.
Wednesday the 26th of January, we refilled the propane in the morning, dumped the tanks,
did some photo backup, put more diesel fuel in the truck, and then headed off to Fort
Wachuka.
Now this is an active army base, first established to fight the Apaches, then used as a jumping
off point for the punitive expedition against Panchovia.
It was used as a place to train soldiers in World War I and World War II.
It looks like it is now mostly involved in intelligence and communications, though it
also has an airfield.
Although one of the recommended places to visit, the museum was closed indefinitely at the
beginning of this year, probably due to the Omicron wave of COVID.
We did go on what was called an historic walk, but it was mostly seeing buildings named
after our previous commanders.
While going by the parade ground, we did see soldiers with flags rehearsing what I think
is called the salute the colors.
I don't know what it would be like in the museum since it was closed, but frankly, if
we had skipped going there today, we wouldn't have missed a whole lot.
Thursday, January 27th, today we visited Klausel Cave Mountain Park and toured the cave.
They did allow non-flash photography, so I got a few pictures of it, but between climbing
the hill from the oversized parking lot, and this was a parking for oversized vehicles.
Our truck is pretty big, but it was a steep climb to get from there to the cave entrance,
and then more than 300 stairs inside the cave and it kind of wore me out.
So we came back to the RV afterwards.
I'd have to say it was less spectacular than the Carchner caverns, so if you only have
time for one cave visit, go to Carchner.
Then Friday the 28th, we just took the day off.
I was not feeling all that good, and I think I came down with a cold.
So I took Friday off because we had made plans for Saturday, and Saturday January 29th,
we had a lot of fun.
The 20 minutes from where we're staying is the mezcal movie set, which has been used
for both movies and TV shows set in the Old West.
Among the actors who a film chair were Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Lee Marvin, and Clint
Eastwood.
This was also the setting for the 1993 film Tombstone with Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer
and Sam Elliott, and also the TV show The Young Riders.
Now the first film shot here was Winchester 73 back in 1950, and all of these buildings
look like they have sat here exposed to the elements much of that time.
As recently as last year, the Carchner family, same as the caverns, bought the property and
set it up as an attraction.
Now volunteers are rebuilding some of the buildings, and they have some reenactors on the site.
We had a very nice chat with a fellow who was the telegraph operator, and again with a
lady who was a dressmaker.
They also had a number of actors and stunt people on site that day who had been in various
of the movies shot here, and we're able to give us stories about what it was like making
those movies.
We also took a short ride on a stage coach, which was very bumpy, but fun to do.
So if you're ever in this area, I think there's a lot of fun.
Go do it.
Then I just, I was kind of wiped out.
So basically there was a long stretch of nothing between January 29th.
The next day we did anything just before we were about to leave, so Monday, February 7th.
One of the things, maybe the result of my misspent youth, I was a smoker at one point.
I stopped in 2008, but my history is, when I get a bronchial infection, it just hangs
on with me forever.
So, you know, I was just coughing for days and days and days.
So February 7th, I was starting to feel better, and I knew we were going to be leaving soon.
So it's like, let's go to Bizby.
Bizby is a mining town, and they do a tour of the Copper Queen mine.
The tour was led by locals who once worked in the mine, which is now closed.
You enter sitting on a very small train that you straddle, and it goes through tunnels
that are barely big enough.
We learned that while Copper was the main product, the hematite ores that they mined also
contained gold and silver, and there was enough gold and silver in the ores to pay for
the mine.
So the Copper was pure profit as a result.
After the tour, we went into the town of Bizby, which was once prosperous when the mine
was producing, but is now pretty run down.
We tried to find the visitor center but failed, so we just walked around the town for a bit
until we had enough.
On the way back to the truck, we discovered the visitor center, but by then we writhed
through and just went back to the truck and then back to the RV.
In Tuesday, February 8th, our last day in the Tucson area, and so we went to the east
side portion of the Suwara National Park for one last hike in the Sonoran Desert.
I really love Sonoran Desert and I had to get in one more visit before we left.
We hiked a few miles with the help of our hiking poles, though frankly for most of the
way we didn't really need them, but it's better to have them and not need them and need
them and not have them.
So with that, this is a hookah for Hacker Public Radio signing off and as always, encouraging
you to support FreeSoftware.
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