17 days, 8 cities, 3,400 miles later, and we are home again. Lulu was very happy to see us, even though she was very well taken care of by our friends. I think she will be missing our vacation as much as we did. But for now she is content to have us home. It was great fun to see graffiti that came from WWII, and more images (below) that came from thousands of years before that. We met people at the peak of their careers, choosing Marfa as a place to be while they make their bones in the journalism or art worlds. I hope they don't feel locked down. I met an old friend who lived out his career as what we used to call a Tramp Miner, and is now retired to Silver City, NM, a place I almost moved to when I was 24. We saw amazing things that you read about your whole life, like the Petrified Forest, and realize that yes, you should see things like this at least once. Or twice There are amazing things that get preserved in a county that gets no rain. Like a thousand year old meteor crater
We like hiking. Especially where we don't run into many people, and we can expect to see unusual things. But sometimes we bite off more than we anticipate. We can chew it, I guess, because we always do. The interesting thing here is that we decided that it was worth an 8 mile hike in the desert to see something we had no idea existed a month ago. At the end of this hike, where the Seminole Canyon meets the Rio Grande, there is a HUGE pictograph of a panther. Only viewable via this hike right now, because of the water level of the Rio Grande (otherwise they offer boat tours) Here was our route (tracked using Alltrails) We thought it was 4 miles round trip... So we started out with great aplomb. It was sunny, but not hot. That is a good thing, as there was no shade for the first five miles. The views were great. And after the first five minutes, we did not see one other person. Seminole Canyon: Interesting fossils in the rocks: Getting close to the Rio Grande: That's the Rio Gra
The last time I was in Tucson it was Spring Break of 1980, and I was here for the College World Series of Mining Schools. We were competing in a number of categories, from what I remember they were: Hand Mucking, Hand Drilling, Jack Leg Drilling, Rail Setting, and Beer Drinking. The schools that made it to the competition were University of Arizona School of Mines (of course, the host school since they won the year before), Colorado School of Mines, Montana School of Mines, South Dakota School of Mines, Missouri School of Mines (that's in Rolla, in case you were wondering). Of those, only CSM and SDSM offer undergraduate Mining Engineering degrees. Sic transit gloria mundi . UW placed last, scoring points only in the beer drinking. We had driven straight through from Madison to Tucson in the head of our department's station wagon. (Thank you, and RIP, Dr Bob Heins) There were 5 of us (as I recall) and it was not a calm bunch. I was the President of the Mining Club (because,
Comments
Post a Comment