When it Rains...

January 30 & 31, 2015

Last Friday, rain came through Southern Arizona, and stayed for the weekend. We blame the Seahawks, who had also came to visit for some reason. Our plans were for our weekend were altered, but we still had quite the adventure!

Driving through the Huachuca Mountains on a grey day!

Of course earlier last week, we purchased our new vehicle Ghillie, and right away we started planning out all the trips we were going to take. The travel bug has bitten us, and we are desperate for adventure! On Friday, we decided to go for a road trip to "break it in." We had a couple more letterboxes to plant in Cochise county before the Tucson Letterboxing Event next week. We headed East on I-10, awe-struck at how fast we could accelerate on the interstate. ;)

This was also Charlotte's first ride in Ghillie. She misses having a seat in the middle of Curtis & I to sit in, and tries to make up for it by sitting in Curtis' lap. We put her in the back seat, where she sat for a bit, then slowly made her way back to the front, where she finally settled for my lap. 

This really wasn't the best day for this adventure. We started out by having to drive on a dirt road, but of course with the rain, it was now a muddy road with lots of big puddles. All this gave us a chance to try out the 4 wheel drive. It works! ;) Then, we did about a 2 mile hike, and decided hiking in this rain was miserable. Thankfully, we were still able to get both boxes planted!

After finishing up, we drove through Sierra Vista, into Fort Huachuca, then through the Huachuca Mountains before meeting up with Highway 83. It was still a pretty drive, with clouds hanging low over the mountains. The worst parts were the dips in the road, where the water would form large puddles and washes. Just a note, when you see signs that say "Do Not Enter When Flooded" in Southern Arizona, they're serious - it really does flood easily when it rains!

Our new Jeep handled it all great though, and we were thankful to make it home safely after having traffic backed up on the I-10 in Tucson. 

On Friday night, Curtis' sister Lydia and her husband Jeff came over for the weekend. We had been planning to do some hiking and driving up the beautiful Mt. Lemmon, but decided to save that for another time when it wasn't raining and we could enjoy the views. (We also heard later that the Catalina Highway was closed because of the weather, so this turned out to be a good call!)

Control room at the Titan Missile Museum

Instead, on Saturday we went to visit a place Curtis and I have saved "for a rainy day." We drove South on I-19 to go visit the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, AZ. We took the hour long tour there, and it turned out to be an interesting and enjoyable tour.

It started with a short informational documentary, then we headed underground to view the missile and control room. 

The Titan Missile II!

Here it is - the missile! This is one of 18 missile sites that were around the greater Tucson area. This one was the one located closest to the Air Force Base in Tucson. It is now the only remaining missile out of 54 in the world. See why you need to come see it? :)

Back outside - after the tour, we walked around the area and checked out all we could see from above ground.

There's a missile under there!

My husband in a fancy shmancy hard hat. ;P

Where all the missiles around Tucson are located

After we finished there, the rain had let up so we decided to make one more stop along I-19 - to the San Xavier Mission. Constructed in 1783, it's the oldest intact European structure in Arizona, and is breathtakingly beautiful! It's still an active church, but they offer tours daily. We opted to just tour on our own though.

The San Xavier Mission

Curtis and I had actually visited here before - it was our very first weekend adventure while living in Tucson! We had only come with friends for the sake of letterboxing though. This time, I feel like I was able to appreciate it so much more because of all that I know about the history of Arizona now.

Inside the Mission

I don't have any pictures of the inside from the last time I was here, so I was once again blown away by the beauty and detail of this mission. This place is so worth visiting if you're in Southern AZ!

The view when you enter the Mission

Murals on the walls.

Facing the front entrance of the mission

Ceilings!

The detail on the front of the Mission

The mission courtyard

My souvenir for the weekend :)

Oh yeah, and while we were touring the Titan Missile Museum, the tour guide volunteered me to pull on the handle of this door on the inside, and I got a certificate for it. Pretty great souvenir if you ask me! ;)

We enjoyed a late lunch at La Parrilla Suiza in Tucson and played a few more games with Lydia and Jeff before they left. It continued raining on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning, we woke up to something that happens very rarely down here: fog! It wasn't very thick, we could see the roads just fine when driving to church, but we couldn't see the mountains at all. We couldn't see them on Friday and Saturday due to rain clouds, but on Sunday the fog completely hid them. It was weird!

And that was our weekend! We're already preparing for next week's hike and hoping for much better weather. Have a great week! :) 

Underground and All Around

When describing our home these days, the first word to come to mind is always "hot". It really does get pretty hot during the day - I've even given in a bit more with the air conditioning inside! But I find that whenever I do venture outside, it really isn't too hard to get used to. We had a lovely walk around our neighborhood last night, and it was a wonderful dry heat feeling with a light breeze. (Of course, when I say neighborhood, I mean to our puppy store. This week, we're in love with a cocker spaniel puppy.)

To continue our Saturday adventures, today we drove an hour Southeast to visit some attractions. If you're like me, you might be thinking "why go further South, won't it just get hotter?" But that isn't true in this instance! Just as Tucson is always 5-10 degrees cooler than Phoenix (even though 2 hours South), Benson, Bisbee and Sierra Vista are all cooler than Tucson - I've heard them to be known as having the "best year-round climate". Even if the difference in temperature is just 5 degrees, it really does feel cooler! 

We left early this morning and drove to our first destination - Kartchner Caverns State Park, just South of Benson, AZ. 

After doing a bit of letterboxing, we arrived at the visitor's center early to tour the museum and learn about the history of the cave before going on our reserved tour. We've toured several caves like this together, such as Colossal Caves in Tucson, Carlsbad Caverns in NM, and Mammoth Caves in KY, but this one in particular stands out to me as a pristine and highly treasured cave. It was only discovered in the 1970's by 2 college students from the University of Arizona. From the first time they crawled through the small, undiscovered underground area, they knew that this was special, and they wanted to find a way to share it with others while still keeping it protected. Then, and to this day, this cave is a live cave - there's still water coming through and allowing it to keep creating more natural structures. 

They managed to keep it a secret while they mapped out the cave for 4 years. After this, the young discoverers told the family that owned the land all about what was going on underground, and the family agreed they had to find a way to protect it. They decided the best way to do this was to turn it into a state park, and in 1988 it became the 25th Arizona State Park. The caves are named after the Kartchner family that owned the land before selling it to the state.

All this said, it's important for anyone planning to visit to know that these caves are still very protected. You aren't allowed to bring in anything but yourself, which means no cameras. Because I wanted to share some pictures from the caves, I'm using ones I found on AZ State Park's website, azstateparks.com. No copyright intended, I just want to convince you that they're so worth going to see!

Above picture - they call these "soda straws" because they can be as thin as 1/10th of an inch. The longest one is over 9 feet long! They are formed by tiny droplets of water that drip to the end of the "straw". 

A picture from when the cave was first being discovered - can you imagine being one of the first to enter, and stumbling across something as amazing as this?! That's exactly what happened!

It took them nearly 2 years to carefully create the railings and pathway that we now use to tour the cave. They also created special vacuum-sealed doors to keep the humidity and moisture inside, so that it could continue to be a living cave. Another fun part of being on the tour is walking through a light mist so that things like lint and oil on our bodies would stick to us instead of in the cave. They take even touching the live formations very seriously - but only with the best intentions of wanting this cave to be alive for generations to come!

The tour we took was about an hour. We loved our tour guide - she used very technical chemistry terms, then broke them down for the kids in the group. It was a great way to spend a summer morning in Arizona - underground where it's nice and cool! :)

After this, we continued driving South to Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, another landmark we'd been wanting to visit. There wasn't a whole lot to do, but we enjoyed walking through the 3 museums about the history of this place. I kept thinking about how much my dad would love this place - he and Curtis have this love for battles and history in common. Yeah, it's true, I married someone very much like my dad. I'm okay with that. :)

Curtis in his happy place!

Outside, facing South - we could see so many familiar mountain ranges from here. So many we've been to…yet so many we want to hike! Sadly, it's just too hot for that right now!

And that was our weekend adventure - 2 more things crossed off our AZ bucketlist, another educational & fun Saturday. Maybe I don't feel as cool as last week when I was gladly proclaiming "I HIKED MT HUMPHREY!" -but still fun nonetheless. I love adventures with my husband, and I'm so blessed to have gotten 11 months of this so far. :)