Wednesday, February 26, 2014

David & Carol's Visit Day 2 & 3

It's always so nice having company from out of town, it gives us an excuse to visit places around Tucson that we have not gone to before. Yesterday afternoon we went to take a tour of the Mission Open Pit Copper Mine, it's only about 18 miles south of Tucson.

Here is Dave & Jim standing beside a tire that goes on one of the hauling trucks.
Here is the trucks coming up from the pit. It's a big hole in the ground.
One of the trucks hauling the material up from the pit. It's amazing the complicated process to come up with the final copper product. Once they extract the product from this site and do some processing here, it's trucked to about 100 miles away for the smelting process, then on to Amarillo, TX for final processing. No wonder copper cost so much.

 Jim standing by an old (and much smaller) haul truck.
Day 3 - Wed. - we went to Sabino Canyon and took the tram up the canyon. Dave & Carol at the top. It was a beautiful day, the sun finally came out after days of overcast. Temps are in the 70s which Dave and Carol are surely enjoying since their temps at home are in the single digits.
Of course, I had to take advantage of a wildflower photo op.


Tonight Jim is taking Dave to the UofA basketball game so Carol, Jamie and I are going out to dinner.

Monday, February 24, 2014

David & Carol's Visit - 1st Day

Dave and Carol arrived Sunday afternoon to enjoy our 70+ degree weather. They left their 9 degree weather in Wisconsin for paradise in Tucson. Enjoyed having the family come over to visit with them last evening and for a simple pulled pork, beans and cole slaw dinner. Unfortunately the photographers (Carol, Marsha and me) didn't get in this picture.
Monday afternoon we took a drive down to the Pima Air & Space Museum. We enjoyed taking the guided tram ride around to learn about all the airplanes on site.
Here are pictures of a few of the planes we saw.
After the tram ride, we went into the hanger exhibits.
 Seriously studying something.


Here is the Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird.
The specs
 It's hard to get a picture of the total length of that plane.
Dave wanted to have ice cream before we headed home, so had our desert before our meal. Spent over 3 1/2 hours at the museum, which was interesting, informative and even was enjoyable to the non-airplane interested person.

Just a quiet evening at home - dinner and a little bit of basketball. Stay tuned to see where we end up tomorrow.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Surprise!!

Well, the surprise is here, arrived around 8am this morning.

Now Jim has a 1967 GT500 to go along with the '68. And one more car he needs to polish!
'67 was the first year they built the GT500.
It'll be fun to take both cars to a show. Our first one will be Fords on Fourth on March 2 on 4th Ave. in Tucson. Hope to see our family and friends turn out for our inaugural car show.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Wildflowers 2014

A friend, Cindy, and I went in search of wildflowers at Sabino Canyon today. It's still a little early for wildflowers, but with the weather being so warm, we figured they would be out early. Plus it's so dry that once they bloom, they will dry out fast. Our search was not a bust - but there is not a plentiful array either. The day was beautiful, the walk was wonderful and the company and conversation was great.

Here are some of the flowers that we did come across.




It might warrant another wildflower trip in a week or so to see if we can find a more plentiful array of flowers.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Cars & Coffee

Took the '68 up to the Cars & Coffee at La Encantada (an impromptu gathering of car enthusiasts every 2nd Sat. of each month from 8am - 10???). This was our first time and was impressed with the variety and the amount of cars.
The '68 looked good! It drew some attention.
 As you can see there was a pretty good crowd. The weather was nice starting out a little cool but warmed up nicely.
 We met Chuck and Kim there with their 2001 Corvette. Sorry, didn't get a picture of their nice car. Here Kim and Jim (off to the right in the picture) are admiring the GT500.

There were several Mustangs there, but Corvettes dominated. We need to get more people to represent the Mustangs! Our next show will be the Fords on Fourth on March 2nd at 4th & 6th in Tucson. Everyone who likes Mustangs needs to come to the show.

P.S. - the surprise is still coming.