I also had a chance to check out the Sonic a bit more thoroughly, and was glad that I had gone for the hatchback. Off in the distance, parked on the gravel was the famous blue Scoot. The last time I saw the Scoot was seven months prior, in Nevada. Since then it had gone to Mexico and back. Must be a tired scoot!
After a bit of a struggle finding a decent breakfast place, eventually we settled on a funky coffee shop that was in an old craftsman style bungalow. The food was decent and the atmosphere was great.
Why does it seem that when I show up, the Scoot is always being abandoned besides someone's house?
Back at the Airbnb, we packed our food in the the coolers.
An then packed Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog...get it?) and departed southward.
Before we left, I stopped at a cul-de-sac for a formal portrait of the Sonic. I was interested in see in how it compared the Ford Fiesta I had rented from Payless Cars a few years back on my trip to Las Vegas, Reno and everywhere in between. It was a base spec Sonic, with AC, cruise, iPhone input and surprisingly, remote start.
My first real taste of south west desert, and boy was I happy to be there.
On our way south towards Tucson, I happened to spot something way off in the distance. It was the Pinal Air Park. It is now primarily a boneyard for commercial aircraft (one of the largest, if not the largest, in the world). It has an interesting history, including being the base of operations for the CIA's covert air operations during the Vietnam war (including the famous Air America). It was sad to see so many 747's awaiting scrapping.
I was so excited to go to the Pima Air & Space Museum - it felt like it was the Smithsonian Air and Space on steroids! I promise I'll try not to bore you with lots of plane pictures.
A Boeing B-52 Stratofortress that was used in the X-15 rocket program.
Boeing B-50 based inflight refueling plane (based on the B-29 design, but with uprated engines and removed armements, these old planes were used into the early '70's).
Another B-29 based plane, the C-97 cargo plane.
Yet ANOTHER B-29 based plane, this time a Super Guppy - used to move massively large items, including the Saturn booster rockets used in the Apollo Space program, and amazingly enough, up until the 1990's, every single fuselage for any Airbus plane. And yes, it can fly.
A Convair B-38 Peacemaker, one of my all time favorite planes, of truly massive proportions.
Another B-52 lurking behind a roped off area, this one dark and mysterious in all black.
And finally, an actual B-29, in all it's restored glory. There were so many other planes there, that I really couldn't take it all in. Unfortunately, the weather started to turn cold, windy and even a little drizzly, so it was time to move on.
As we headed closer to the Mexican border and our campsite for the night, the weather got progressively worse. The dark skies started to open, and it began to rain. Somehow, I managed to miss an important turn, and we headed off into the wilds of Arizona.
We were very much not in the right place, but at least I got to see an real live arroyo, with concrete in place of the asphalt so as not to be washed away when the sudden flooding happened.
Determined not to backtrack, we kept going further south on a road that became increasingly bad. eventually, some 30 miles from the missed turn off, we gave up. The road signs didn't make any sense, our GPS was without signal, and darkness was approaching.
We spotted a lonely calf wandering the road while retracing our steps.
Eventually we made it back to the main road, and the skies that looked like they were no longer threatening opened up again. We still ventured into the campground we wanted for the night, but for some weird reason, it was completely full. Thoughts of trying to set up camp in the cold rain and darkness just weren't that appealing, so we headed into the border town of Nogales, Arizona for the night, and found a Motel 6 with reasonable rates. Figuring that we had nothing to lose, we checked in.
I had a tiny bit of forethought while in the hotel room, and decided to prepare some of the food we had bought for the next night. Onions + red wine + steak, left to marinate seemed like a good idea.
The rest of the night was accompanied by a bottle of wine, and a good nights sleep.
