March 22, 2009

Saguaro National Park

I was excited to get down to Tucson so we left the Pinal County Campground a day earlier than we originally planned. On the way to the Gilbert Ray Campground we stopped at the visitor's center for Saguaro National Park to pick up Junior Ranger packets for the kids. I was impressed with a display about water in the visitor's center. It stated that the average house hold uses 100 gallons of water per person per day. Our family has been using 60 gallons per week. With seven people in the family that comes out to 1.22 gallons of water per person per day. I guess that doesn't include laundry which we do at the laundry mat, all the same I think it safe to say we are below the average when it comes to water consumption.

I was pleased that the campground wasn't full, by time we got setup and had dinner it was time to go to sleep. The kids spent Friday (March 6, 2009) working on Junior Ranger packets and school work in the campground. I lost the day reinstalling Vista on my laptop with the hope that I could resolve some of the crumby behavior I was getting from my laptop. I did get some improvement but overall I really think Vista has missed the mark.

The kids working on Junior Ranger packets.

Natalyn measuring a cactus.

I love Arizona sunsets!

There was something eating the prickly pear cacti over night!

Lexie took the kids to see more Petriglyphs.

Petriglyphs in Saguaro National Park.

I find the plants of the Sonora Desert very interesting.

Kitt Peak

When I was somewhere around ten years old we took a family trip with my cousins that included a stop to the Kitt Peak National Observatory. I don't remember much about the trip other than I had a fabulous time and I got in trouble for climbing on the walls. In fact I was confused about the location until I saw an add for Kitt Peak on a web page I was visiting to gather information about the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. I had grown up thinking that the Kitt Peak National Observatory was near Flagstaff. That is part of the beauty of trips as a kid, you just get in the car and go somewhere without sweating the details, sometimes you know where you are sometimes you don't. Well, when I put it that way I realize that not much has really changed.

I was very excited to see that we would be able to fit a visit to Kitt Peak into our vacation plan, I was extra excited when I learned that Myron Anderson, a man I served with as a missionary in Korea about 13 years ago would be able to bring his family and meet me there. He has three kids that are similar in age to my kids. I hadn't seen Myron since Korea so on the way to the observatory in the morning my excitement kept shifting between seeing the observatory and seeing Myron. It was great to be able to do both at the same time.

We did a tour of the helioscope before Myron arrived. I was very impressed with the scale of the telescope and all of the engineering and politics that went into its development. A major problem with getting a large image of the sun through a telescope is that a large image of the sun gathers a lot of sun light, which contains a lot of heat, which will melt telescope components if the telescope isn't large enough. The telescope they have up there of course is gigantic. Another issue that comes up with a telescope that size is that the light path inside the telescope needs to be kept at the same tempurature. The telescope is lined with a network of copper piping for heat regulation. Manufacturing lenses the size they need is its own challenge for several reasons. Anyway, in short the work required to make the telescope requires an amazing amount of expertise and an amazing amount of work. It is very gratifying to see a great human acomplishment like that one. It is one thing to get a great idea in one's mind and another thing to get that many human minds and hands together to achieve a great result.

Myron and his family were waiting for us when we got back from the first tour. I was glad to see that our children seemed to get along well and had fun playing together. We all went on a tour of another telescope. I thought the tour guide and some of the guests were too grouchy about the noise the kids were making, but I decided not to make a scene about it. I don't have much sympathy for people who sit in the back and complain they can't hear, especially when the kids were not being exceptionally noisy. I think the kids exposure to the telescopes is more important than the adults, because for the most parts by the time people are adults, and especially old grumpy ones, most of their life choices are made. Children are the ones who are the most likely to gain a life directing influence from exposure to a tour like the one being presented.

After the second tour we had a picinic at a picinic table next to the parking lot. I had a lot of fun visiting with Myron and his wife, somewhere in the conversation we realized that the third tour of the day was leaving, but by that time I was more interested in visiting than seeing another telescope and was satisfied that the kids were doing just as well to be playing by that point. All in all it was a great day. I would like to go back for one of their night tours sometime, but I don't really know when I'll be able to.

Natalyn and Dallin at Kitt Peak

Some very impressive telescopes

Our kids had fun playing together

It was great to see Myron again and meet his family

Hold on Jacob, it's a wild ride!

Tombstone

We stayed at the Gilbert Ray Campground through the weekend so that we could go to church in Tucson. Finding a church in Tucson proved a bit tricky because in addition to the operating system problems I was having with the computer the internet connection also went bad on both computers. I took the first address I found in the phone book and got us to the church distrabution center about 10 minutes past nine. By 9:30 we had found another building that actually had a meeting in and decided to stay at that one even though we were half an hour late. The rest of Sunday just diappeared the way Sundays seem to. I think a nap and reading "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" to the kids ate the afternoon and evening.

At Kartchner Caverns it is required to get reservations for the Big Room tour and recommend to get reservations for the Rotundra Tour. We made our reservations for Tuesday. We dropped our trailer at the campground and continued on toward Tombstone. We didn't really know what there would be to see in Tombstone, but I had become intrigued with the place as I had been doing a little reading about Wyatt Earp. Our plan was to check town and if there was nothing to do continue on to the border to check out Mexico. It turned out that there was plenty to do in Tombstone albeit it seemed they charged for everything. The reenactment of the OK Corral gun fight was quite interesting to watch. The play emphasied how quickly the events transpired and also how it really wasn't clear who was right and who was wrong in the altercation. While on the subject of quickly traspiring events, just before the play started (in an outdoor theater) as I was working to get kids in their seats I heard a loud crashing sound, that I assumed at first was a stage prop of some sort to get the play started. I looked left over my shoulder (we were on the top row at the request of the kids) and saw that two cars had collided in the intersection. I don't think anyone was hurt. I found myself entertaining the thought of whether or not there was any significance or connection in crashing one's car at the site of the OK Corral gun fight. I'd imagine the connection if any was as simple as a tourist was looking at signs instead of looking at the road, however every now and then it is fun to try to weave a bigger web when connecting events in life. I pity anyone nerdy enough to know what a linear feedback shift register is and I won't bore anyone here with the scant details I can recount from college, but I will share that it is a very simple circuit that can among other things be used to produce "random" numbers. Even though the numbers show up as statistically independent, meaning they don't show any immediately obvious relationship to one another they are in fact generated through a very simple, predicatable and reproducable process. So we can leave the crash at the OK Corral as a couple of distracted tourists or we can view it as a piece of a larger puzzle.

The gift shops in town had a great collection of cap guns. Imagining the outcome of buying some cap guns the kids didn't have a chance, even if they used their own money. Even Natalyn was getting excited about a set of pink cap guns. I was sympathetic to them however. I did leave town wanting a mustache, a long trench coat and a sawed off shot gun. Dan is kind of a tough cowboy name isn't it! I actually see myself as more of a pioneer than a cowboy.

On the way home we stopped, or more acurately were stopped at a border security check point. We asked the border patrol officer what he thought of the safety of a day trip to Nogales, we got a "you're crazy" stare, a small laugh, and an answer of "I wouldn't do it!" We took that as enough to make a full abortion of our plan of seeing Mexico this trip. I was very frustrated to scrap the trip because Nogales is such a neat town. I had been very excited to get the kids into a new country, show them the shops and let them hear people speaking Spanish. I suppose I am going to need to figure out a way to raise some more cash and get them over to Spain or Italy. Pizza in Italy, that sound nice...

Jailed in Tombstone

This historic district in Tombstone is very impressive

In town with Wyatt Earp and company

Get a whip on that horse!

The kids had fun working with some lassos

Natalyn in an 1885 model pickup truck

Boothill, here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a 44, NO LES, NO MORE

Karchner Caverns

We were warned several times that we were taking a lot of kids into the cave, and that kids were often scared in the cave. I don't know a better way to get a kid into a cave than to take a kid into a cave so I really didn't see a viable alternative. I thought it would be much better to take the kids in and let them be scared (they could leave if they needed) than to deny them the opportunity based on what might happen. It turned out the kids had perfect behavior and totally loved the cave. We had a wonderful tour guide who was probably the best balance of personable, educating, and entertaining that I have ever seen in a guide. The limestone formations inside the cave were wonderful to see, of the 30 known cave formations 28 formations are found in the Kartchner Caverns.

Children under 7 were not allowed on the Big Room Tour so I watched Natalyn, David and Jacob while Lexie took Tyrell and Dallin on the Big Room tour. She reported that the Big Room was even more impressive than the Rotunda Room. I was glad she was able to go. I am excited to explore more caves in the future.

Natalyn and David

This visitor's center had some fun mock cave tunnels.

Every now and then Natalyn gets some great photos

 

Pima Air and Space Museam

Having decided that it was not prudent to go to Mexico we had an extra day available to play. Our campground neighbor loaned us a couple of books about day trips in Arizona. After reviewing the books I thought the thing that looked the neatest was the Pima Air and Space Museum. We went to an air and space museum near Seattle when Ty was a toddler and he loved that one, we thought a pretty sure bet he would appriciate this one as well.

The museum is wonderful. The first exibit as one walks in is a reproduction of the Wright Flyer, the aircraft which made the first controlled human flight in 1903, after several wonderful displays including what became David's favorite of the world's smallest air craft, one got to the museum's Black Bird, a stealth jet developed in the early sixties capable of flying at over 2100 mph (mach 3.2) and at altitudes of 85,000 feet, quite a jump from the wood and canvas contraption in the openning display which catalyzed things just 60 years prior. Looking at all of the different air craft left me excited with the idea of designing and flying a jet, it just seems so simple ... motor, wings, controllers, flight! Dallin couldn't get to a paper fast enough after the museum so that he could start drawing airplanes.

Inside my heart I know I want to fly. I also know that I don't want to die any earlier than medically neccessary. I haven't resolved yet just how dangerous flying really is. I know that flying anything I designed would be very dangerous. At some point I think I will find a balace that does have me flying, I might be old enough that I am wearing adult diapers by the time I finally do, but that's all part of the balance.

A great museum!

The kids really enjoyed pretending to pilot some of the planes.

Mmmmm, me want dat!

In the outdoor part of the museum

A plane used by Nasa, for zero gravity training I would imagine, but I don't know.

Ty by one of the Blue Angels

Ty really liked the planes with teeth on the nose art

David's favorite plane was the Bumble Bee.

Arizona Sonora Desert Museum

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum is another place that I remembered from childhood trips, although I remembered it more clearly because I had been there more times. I had so much fun going with my cousins as a kid, I was delighted that Lexie's sister Jennifer and family would be able to join us there for a day. I really appricate my parents and the great opportunities they gave me as a child. I feel really good when I feel like I am able to share a part of the world with my children. I experience it as a tribute to my parents.

For people who haven't been to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, I would recommend finding a calendar and getting a date marked to go see it. Of course I would lean toward winter or fall weather months for that calendar mark over summer months, a great part of the museum is outdoors. I also recommend the camping at the Gilbert Ray campground, it is only about a 5 minute drive from the museum. There are more places like it now, but at the time the museum was developed it was quite novel in that the museum features several natural displays. We did not have a bit of trouble filling our day as we went between demonstrations and exhibits. I think left on my own I could have spent three or four days there without loosing interest in things. At some point in my life I think I will become a docent at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, or a place like it.

I can't really pick a favorite part of the day, but if I had to, I think it would be a lecture the museum gave in the afternoon about the gila monster and rattle snakes. I was very amused to learn that the statistically most common profile of a rattle snake victim is 1) Male (no surprise) 2) Young 18-35 (no surprise) 3) Drunk (no surprise) 4) Tatooed (suprise!). I guess the mind that generates the idea that a permanent skin picture is a good idea, is also a mind that generates the idea that it might be fun to pick up a potentially fatally posionous snake. I think I would have let the thinking about the tatoos go as funny buy not really significantly realated, but it was the very next day when I was talking to someone about rattlesnakes, they were telling me how they had recently seen one and were throwing rocks at it, but couldn't get it to strike. After that they showed me their tattoo! The presenter said that most rattlesnake bites are preceeded by the words "hey, hold my beer and watch this!" Something I did not realize is that 1 in 20 rattlesnake bites are fatal. A reason more are not fatal is that we have good medical intervention for rattlesnake bites. The catch, which is also something I had no idea of, is the average bill for treatment of a rattlesnake bite at a hospital is $100,000. The presenter also told a story of a person bit by their pet rattlesnake who with a life flight managed a bill of $320,000. Having been to the air and space museum the day before, several ideas for better uses of that kind of money quickly came to mind. Playing with snakes just isn't worth it.

A few interesting things I learned about hawks... A hawk can see a mouse from 1 mile away. Their vision is so sharp that if they were able to read, they would be able to read a newspaper from across a football field. The Kestrel Hawk can see into the ultraviolet spectrum, which enables it to see urine trails of rodents. Finally the Harris's Hawk is a pack hunter. Several hawks will perch around a hunting area. The lowest hawk in the social order makes the first dive when game is spotted. The first hawk likely misses and pushes the prey into a bush. The hawk then uses its talons to flush the animal from the bush. Once the animal is flushed the second lowest hawk in the social order makes its dive and so forth. Pretty cool huh?

Lots of things were in bloom at the desert museum

Happy Jacob!

We got a great view of the Mountain Lions

I forgot what everyone was looking at in this picture.

Isn't that cute?

Ty looking a bit tired

Learning about a bird that can see mouse pee

A western diamondback rattlesnake

Learning about the Harris's hawk

The kids work on some navigating

Kevan, Jennifer, and Natalyn

After the lecture we were so hungry we started lunch in the parking lot

Hotdogs!

I have a weakness for hot dogs and often think their advertising should be regulated much like tabacco or alcohol, it just isn't fair of places to advertise that they are selling something so toxic and enticing at the same time. I can't see a place that advertises hot dogs without wanting to eat a hot dog. In this case it was my own church doing the tempting, so I had a religous obligation to indulge, how convienent!

The morning's schedule and day's travel on Friday (March 14, 2009) centered on making it back to Quartzsite by 4PM for the ward hotdog and hamburger barbeque. I was not disappointed at quarter to four we pulled up next to the pavillion the ward was using and I could see quarter pound hot dogs making their way toward the grill. The parking place doubled as a camp site in as much as it was in the South LaPosa Long Term Visitor Area. It was quite a convienence to be able to take the house to a church function in that it made it simple to put the kids to bed afterward.

There was a brief animal demonstration by a member of the Arizona BLM. The kids got to sit right up front and get a great view of a gopher snake, desert tortoise, screech owl and Harris's hawk. I left the demonstration thinking a gopher snake seemed like a pretty handy critter in that it likes eating mice and loves eating rattlesnakes.

After I had finished my hotdog and had been stealing chips of the kid's plates for a while my friend Alva came by and said he was on his way home to watch the BYU-San Diego game. I don't remember if I was invited or somehow just invited myself, after getting cleared by Lexie to ditch the activity (I had what I came for) Ty and I went off with Alva to watch the game. I was very amused as Ty watched the game he would point out the tatooed players as rattlesnake bait. The game ended wrong if you are a BYU fan, but it was entertaining to watch.

When we got back we learned that people at the church party had gone home before starting the bon fire which they had planned. The BLM ranger told Lexie she could have the wood and was welcome to a fire if she wanted it. As we pulled in Lexie and the younger kids were sitting about 10 feet back from a very impressive pile of coals. The five of them had enjoyed a fire that was big enough for the two or three hundred people it was intended for. Down in Mexico they sell marshmallows almost the size of baseballs. The kids had a lot of fun roasting their oversized marshmallows over the oversized fire. I was impressed with how quickly the fire burned. It didn't seem like it burned much longer than a normal campfire, just hotter. When it came time to put the fire out we decided that we would have to make an early water trip the next day and put most of our containered drinking water onto the fire. It was impressive as we poured the water on the ground it would just stay in a rolling boil. I think the ground was holding a lot of heat from the fire. After we poured over 10 gallons on the fire and everything was underwater we decided it was good for the night.

At the ward party waiting for an animal demonstration

Gopher snakes seem like pretty neat critters

Dallin on the edge of his seat

The kids got a great view of the animals

Ty and I came back from watching the game to find a party!

Monday After Vacation

I titled this section with the word Monday but it really describes the whole week. Be warned it is very whiny so probably much more fun for me to write than for you to read so I won't fault you for not reading it. It is easy to blame the vacation getting everyone worn out, but I think it was just coincedental. I think it would have been a hard week regardless. My last work day before the vacation was fighting Vista. I spent my first two work days back between fighting Vista and then finally giving up and switching laptops with Lexie to go back to XP. Mac lovers need not give me any advice. I am planning on dumping the Windows scene as soon as I have the cash for nice Mac laptop. I had an extention to the spades game I wrote for Global Chat and Games to write which should have taken about two days. With a full week of effort working well into Saturday I finally got it finished. Vista wasn't the only problem during the week. The weather had heated up quite a bit so I needed to figure out a way to configure my portable air conditioner for the suburban (last year's solution was to go to Alaska). Nothing really went wrong with the generators, but it seemed like between giving them oil and gas I was monkeying with them quite a bit, which wasted a lot of time and I would loose time switching my office between the car and trailer as Lexie needed the car for in town items. Natalyn broke out into what we thought was a case of chicken pox, which turned out to be hives, which also added to the general stress in that what ever had gotten her sick I think was also dragging a bit on everybody else. Really just having a sick five year old on its own drags on everybody else. Thursday I actually got a nice day of work done and Friday started out as a very promising day. Lexie was in town running errands and I was working from the trailer and watching Natalyn. After a couple hours of getting some nice progress on the code, Lexie called and explained the trouble she had in town with a dead battery. A couple people tried to help give her a jump start but the efforts failed. One of the people "helping" called a tow truck, which did get the truck started but tagged us with the burden of trying to get $45 back from our insurance. Had we made the call to the insurance company I'm sure there wouldn't have been a problem, but since the other guy called the tow truck directly there might be issues. I hope there won't be issues but anyway it is a pain. A dead battery really shouldn't consume a day, but it did. Lexie got home and we discovered that the car would not start again. An errand she hadn't gotten to before the dead battery was getting gas. This meant that we didn't have gas for the large generator and hence couldn't run the air conditioning. I don't think the heat was dangerous, but it was very uncomfortable. We tried charging the car battery with the small generator but after a couple hours it didn't really seem to be making much progress. With some calling around I found a place in town that sold a battery that would fit the suburban so we decided we would get a neighbor to help us jump the car and then go buy a battery. I took a quarter mile walk over to our nearest neighbor and was pleased to find he was willing to help us. After about an hour of trying several things including using the batteries from the trailer we weren't able to get the car to even pretend to start. I felt bad enough for the time I had taken from the neighbor so I didn't ask him for a ride to town. After some consideration of taking an 8 mile walk with the stroller to go fetch a battery and some encouragment in a more practical direction from Lexie I decided to call Alva and ask for a ride. I felt horrible about interupting the Utah game (or really it should be called the Arizona game given the result) I was sure he would be watching, but I was very greatful to be rescued. After getting to town and back, and getting the battery installed we had just enough time to throw everyone and dinner into the car and rush off to get Tyrell to scouts late. After dropping Ty off we did the grocery shopping, got gas and dropped Lexie off at the laundrymat. The rest of us picked up Ty and then came back to the laundrymat where we waited until about 9PM for the laundry to finish. Saturday we had been talking about doing a hike up the little mountain next to camp, but with the inefficiency of the week I felt a lot of pressure to get more work done. With both the mountian climb and the work seeming like important uses of my time I decided to do the work because it sounded like less fun and thus was most likely more important. I was pleased that with most of Saturday I was able to finish my programming task for Global Chat and Games.

The fall out of the week is that I found the inefficiencies of our current infrastructure so frustrating that I have decided that I am going to purchase a canvas wall tent to use as an office. The economics don't translate directly, but overall I think it will be a good investment. The good work days I have had in my current life style have been so good that I feel very justified in my pursuit of the life style. The bad work days of last week were bad enough to have me wondering if I was stupid and crazy. I have resolved that I am mostly crazy and just a touch stupid. Crazy is pretty much unfixable, but stupid can be overcome or at least counter compensated with perserverance and hard work.

Jacob and David