| Waking up to a chorus of jet planes rush hour traffic & someone
having a shower I realised that today was the start of my solo road trip...
My friend packed for the last time & we made tracks for the airport, arriving at the gate we found that the previous flight to Columbus had been canceled due to bad weather & the one my friend was to catch had also been delayed.. ..and then just as my friend was thinking about changing her flight they cancelled all flights to Columbus & closed the airport... super.. a free flight change & I gain a travel pal for the next 2 days. We decided to get the H out of Phoenix before our luck changed & got on the road south to Tucson & the Pima air museum that had looked so inviting when we were in that area on Sunday. |
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I have no idea whats going on here... 
Outside Colossal Cave. |
The Pima Air & Space museum is highly recommended to anyone who
likes close up encounters with rare military planes, they`ve got `em all;
F-doobie doo`s to B-Flibbity-Jibs.. the beautiful SR-71 sat in its hanger
the prettiest of the pretty looking as other worldly today as it did 30
odd years ago when it first flew.. we were lucky, working in one of the
hangers was a genuine fighter ace from WW2.. Frank Pierce has 18 confirmed
kills to his name & boasts of a further 180 "japs" shot down whilst
hanging from their parachutes.. I asked him 3 times if it was hard shooting
a helpless human being in cold blood but he became suddenly deafer than
he had been during our entire chat and I never found out...
We wandered around in Pima for a couple of hours before leaving for Colossal Cave which is 20 mins up the road.. on leaving Pima however we realised that we were next to "Bobs Air-Ranch" which is the graveyard for most (all?) military planes, some of you may have seen the awesome aerial shots of this place, 100`s of B52`s all lined up with their tails cut off & lying on the ground beside them so the Russian spy satellites can see that they are decomissioned. unfortunately we wern't allowed in so we stood on the car for a while admiring the sight. Colossal Cave is much like any other large showcave.. the guide had one good gag: "These formations are stalagtites.. those growing up from the floor are stalagmites.. and the bright ones are stalaglites.." Celebrity rock formations included: Elvis (natch), Mr Magoo and Santa Claus. Worth a visit if you're in the area. (If I go again I`m going to take a musical xmas card & drop it down the bottomless pit, the guide assured us anything we dropped down there they wouldn't retrieve.. lets see how they feel after 10 days of "Silent Night" in beep-tone reverberating around the place... |
| From the caves we headed into New Mexico with White Sands as our destination,
I want to go to the space museum, my friend is keen on the the white sands
national park.. en route we played many rounds of our favorite travel game
"Who the hell am I then, ..EH?" (later renamed: "Celebrity Stalker") and
I had my first ever Taco Bell (bland but filling)..
On arrival in Las Cruces we booked in the fabby & cheap Comfort Inn then headed out for a movie.. the only thing neither of us had seen was "A Civil Action" what a pile of horse pucky.. between the chatters behind us, crumple popcorn bag man to our right and the noiseiest nose in New Mexico behind & to the right I'm surprised I got as much sleep as I did.. the film sucked the big one & more... my worst ever experience in a movie theatre. Some grease at Applebees & then home to bed topped the day... cya tomoz. -S.
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Can you see the car running on the railway tracks? it had retractable railway wheels, ...Impressed us anyway.
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