Episode: 3770
Title: HPR3770: Tucson
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3770/hpr3770.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 05:11:28

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,770 for Friday the 13th of January 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Tusson, it is part of the series Travel.
It is hosted by Aoka, and is about 15 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
We move to Benson, a town just southeast of Tusson.
Hello, this is Aoka, welcome you to Hacker Public Radio, and another exciting episode.
And I'm continuing my travel log of our RV trip.
And we're going to pick up in Tusson, actually Benson, which is just outside of Tusson.
And on Thursday, January 13th, we moved to a different site to see if that would fix our
electrical problem, and we'll see what happens.
Cheryl did some socializing with a couple who pulled in to the spot next to us, but then
they had a dog, so that's not terribly surprising.
And then we did some shopping, so it was a pretty quiet day for us.
Friday, January 14th, we had one electrical dropout in the morning, but that was all.
We can live with that.
I'm suspecting a low voltage condition.
When there is a dropout, the alternating current powered stuff shuts off, and then comes
back on a minute later.
After breakfast, we went to the Carchner Caverns State Park, which was only about 10 miles
from our campground.
We went on a guided tour of the caverns, which lasted about an hour and a half, and then
watched a film about how the caverns were discovered and developed.
We were not allowed to take any pictures on this tour, but I can say for sure they are
extremely serious about preserving the caverns.
We essentially went through air locks entering and leaving, and the caverns maintained a temperature
of 71 and a humidity of 98 percent continually.
Now after the tour in the movie, we opted for the foothills trail, which was a pretty
strenuous 2.4 mile hike up and down foothills on a trail that was uneven and rocky.
We definitely had enough for the day by the time we were done with that, but it was a
good day.
My knee did feel a bit of strain, so I think tomorrow will be laundry day, and otherwise
it's resting a bit.
Saturday, January 15th, not mostly a maintenance day.
We did the laundry, dumped the tanks, but we also went for a short walk.
There's a nice little park next door to where we are staying, so we started there.
Observed a lot of holes in the ground.
They're undoubtedly made by wildlife, but what kind exactly we don't know.
We have been told that snakes are not out right now and won't be until April, but this
is rattlesnake country.
So we're always cautious and stay on the paths.
We did see some quail while we're out, otherwise resting up after that hike yesterday.
Sunday, January 16th.
Today was Tombstone, Tombstone, Arizona.
This is totally old western kitch.
It's well done.
It's worth a trip if you're in the area.
Now, it's not a place you'd ever go back to a second time.
They do a so-called reenactment of the gunfight at the OK Corral.
It's a timed show, so you want to check the times and get your tickets.
We did so and got tickets for the 1PM show, and it included tickets for the Tombstone
Historama, which ran on the hour.
So we went there for the noon showing.
The Historama is a combination of film and models and is narrated by Vincent Price.
It gives the history of Tombstone, which began as a mining town and flourished until the
rising water in the mines shut everything down.
Then a quick lunch and on to the gunfight show.
Totally cheesy but fun.
We looked at exhibits afterwards then went to the Birdcage Theater, which at one time
when Tombstone was flourishing was bringing in major acts.
Now, the Tombstone is interesting.
Why is it called Tombstone?
You might think, well, Wild West, all these people were shot with Colt 45s and all that
kind of stuff.
It's not really where the name comes from, where the name comes from, is a miner who
left Fort Wachuka to go and start looking for silver.
One of the other people at Fort Wachuka said, you know, the only thing you're going to
find out there is your Tombstone.
So when he did strike silver, he called it the Tombstone mine as a result of that and
then the town that grew up around it became known as Tombstone.
So little history there.
Anyway, with all the things we did in Tombstone, that ate up most of the day so we went home
tired but feeling that we'd seen all we wanted to see there.
Now, Monday, January 17th, this was the day we went to the Chirikawa National Monument.
Now this is really beautiful and in some ways reminded us of what we saw in Utah a few
years ago, such as Bryce and Zion, only instead of the red sandstone of the Utah parks,
the rocks were grave volcanic tough, which is rock which forms when volcanic ashes compressed
over time, then the wind causes weathering and erosion and you get beautiful shapes.
Chirikawa gets his name from the Chirikawa Patchies who once lived here, but of course in
the usual United States way, they got moved on the land somewhere else.
They call these rock formations Sky Islands, which kind of makes sense because you have
mountains rising up suddenly in the middle of plains.
So it's not like the mountain range where it's just all these mountains together, you
got a flat plain and there's suddenly a mountain in the middle of it.
We drove up a winding road to the top at Masai Point, then hiked the Masai Nature Trail,
then started on the trail to Echo Canyon, but it was very rough and downhill and when
we considered we'd have to go back uphill every step that we went down, at a certain
point we said, Nance, turn around.
Can we drove back to the bottom and walked a little way along the lower Rialite Canyon
Trail?
By then it was about 230, we were tired and we had a 90 minute drive back to the RV so
we left.
It was a good day and this is a place well worth a visit and probably spending more than
one day.
Tuesday, January 18th.
Well, turned out to be a rainy day.
We didn't get a lot of them on this trip, but this was one.
So good for a day of rest.
We did take an empty propane tank to be refilled, but that was about it for the day.
Now when you spend over three months on a trip like this, you don't need to go full speed
every day.
A day or two of rest every week is just fine and in fact is probably sensible.
Wednesday the 19th.
We went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum and it was well worth the trip.
Adosin went into great detail about soaro cactuses and had some samples to show us of seeds
across sections, some rib pieces, and so on.
There were geological exhibits, fossils, animals, and plants.
There were examples of all the minerals to come out of the mines and some wildlife.
We saw some of the reptiles and invertebrates that populate the sonoran desert, a bobcat,
and we looked like about five havalinas, which is a type of peckery, distantly related
to pigs.
There was a walk through aviary and hummingbird exhibits.
I had trouble getting a picture of the hummingbirds since they're very small and move quickly,
but I think our favorite of all was the cactus garden, which was magnificent.
The museum is adjacent to part of the Soaro National Park, which we will visit later.
Now the Soaro National Park interestingly has two sections that are separated from each
other. One is on the west side of Tucson and the other is on the east side.
So the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum is on the west side and just up the road is the west
part of the Soaro National Park.
Now the one on the east side is near where we're staying in Benson, which is on the east
side of Tucson.
On Thursday, January 20th, we went to visit Sabino Canyon, a recreation area within the
Coronado National Forest, which is operated by the Forest Service.
Happily, our national parks pass got us free admission.
If you're in the United States, get your national parks pass.
We really scored well because a few years back, they ran a special and if you were a senior
citizen, anyone over the age of 65, you could get a good lifetime pass for $20.
We jumped on that and Cheryl and I each got one, although we only need one, but at that
price, we both picked one up and so we get free admission to all of the national parks,
national monuments, all kinds of places and in this place, part of the national forest
we got in for free.
One of the things we were planning to do at this park was a guide and tour via tram, but
it turned out that all the tickets for this day were sold out, so we bought two tickets
for tomorrow.
Then we got on a tram ride to the Seven Falls Trailhead, that was not sold out, in fact you
didn't need to buy a ticket for that one, and hiked as far as the first river crossing,
of which there were several.
This involved clamoring across on rocks and we decided that was a good place to turn around.
The hike to the falls was six miles round trip over very uneven and rocky terrain, so
we had already decided not to try the whole thing.
I'm 70, and my darling wife is like two years younger than I am, but neither one of us
are spring chickens here, and so we have to decide what's an appropriate level of activity
for us.
Anyway, we went back to the trailhead and picked up the Bayer Canyon Trail, which took us
back in the direction of the Visitor Center, and then it also took us on a short side trip
to see the dam.
Rivers we saw did have water in them, which we've not seen a lot of in Arizona, but it appears
the water comes out of the mountains, and we did have rain a few days back.
Every place we looked, the views were fantastic, and we took a lot of photos.
I'm just in love with this desert landscape, landscape, something we don't have in Michigan,
and with a distinct kind of beauty, then we went back to the parking lot.
I did a lot of hiking today, but I'm feeling like I'm slowly getting in shape for it.
We had a couple of walking sticks donated to us by a couple who didn't need them anymore,
and we left them on the path back when we didn't need them anymore.
But we found a summit hut store that sold hiking and camping supplies and bought some
proper hiking poles.
So many of these desert hiking pads are on rough ground, and the poles can really help.
Oh, Friday, January 21st.
Back to Sabino Canyon, where we had tickets for the 1pm tram tour.
The road we took crossed Sabino Creek several times, and in one place the creek flowed over
the crossing instead of under.
Now the water is a combination of rainfall and winter snow melt from Mount Lemon, and
made for a very scenic tour.
After that we hiked back to the dam, this time approaching it from the west side, yesterday
we were on east side.
Then on the way back we detoured into a nature walk and spotted a crested soaro with
a very interesting shape.
Now a crested soaro is one where the soaro cactuses typically just grow up as a straight pole
with maybe one or two branches at a certain point.
But a crested one suddenly sprouts multiple branches at a certain point.
So we got some pictures of this, and by the way the links in the show notes you can see
all the pictures we took.
So by the time we got down it was 3.30 and time to get going.
Our route took us by the Davis, Monten, Tucson, Air Force Base, and kind of looked like
a storage facility for older planes.
We saw a lot of propeller-driven planes that looked to be in long-term storage.
Now this space is very near the Pima Air and Space Museum we visited earlier, and we finally
made our way back home.
Saturday the 22nd, after two days of strenuous hiking at Sabino Canyon, we woke up to a cooler
overcast day with rain in the forecast, and it was about time to do some laundry.
So today looks like a day of rest, later on some shopping.
Another Sunday January 23rd, another cool overcast day with rain threatening, so we again
stayed in the RV.
Now I brought a laptop for gaming, so I went back to my game of Alpha Centauri and won
it by cornering the energy market, though I could have won it anyway I chose since I
was so dominant, and then I started another game.
So this is a hookah for Hacker Public Radio, signing off, and is always encouraging you
to support free software.
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