The post in which we return to Tucson, and then make a round trip to Austin.

We're Back!!!!!!!!  For Now.   Not sure how we feel about that, but..

we happily report that we did not lose the little tiny card that provided the directions to get the shuttle bus from the Tucson airport to the lot where Baby Beluga had been parked all alone and  unsupervised for the month we were in Europe/Asia.  We were worried about her.  She is after all, our current home. And then the  shuttle bus driver greeted us with:   We thought you were never coming back!  

In a 'great minds' moment, images of Baby propped up on cinder blocks with no tires, her license plates missing and/or her water pipes frozen and broken simultaneously appeared to both of us.  But there she was, our little nomad home, waiting for us, and all was well. A gratitude for sure. 

Taken in Organ Pipe National Monument a couple of weeks later

We were lucky to spend our first week back with Michael and William so we can update our story line about William's broken femur. It's good news:  his recovery is progressing. Strong muscles attached to a healed bone is the  condition the orthopedist has made in order to remove the rods in his thigh.  He's already 'graduated' from physical therapy.  He runs on a treadmill every morning:  

Lindsay's home gym at 5:45 am.  TV time for William on the treadmill,  accompanied by his dad on the rowing machine.

 William rides his bike now without trepidation. AND he has not only recently run a 5k but finished second in the youth division.

He's working hard on all this.  Nonetheless,  during his  February visit, the Ortho discovered  a yet unhealed part of the break so the rods can't come out. Maybe in May.  William does seem to have inherited Michael's speedy spaghetti legs. (We're proud of Michael, too;  he came in 1st overall in the 10K race.)

Then, because we can, we set off for a quick (Ha! Each way takes two days.) round trip to Austin, TX to check in on my brother, and others.  My nephews and niece are all making sure he's well cared for, and with a change in ownership of his assisted living facility, he seems  lots better off.

We dined  with our soon to be daughter-in-law and her sweet little Laura.  Aren't we lucky to be able to add these two strong and lovely women to our family?  

Laura made us sweet little Valentines pictures that now hang in Baby Beluga.  She calls us 'Mark's Mom' and 'Mark's Dad', and we love it!

We wrapped up Austin with a great dinner with my nephew Jeff and his wife Barbara and a breakfast with friend Cheryl.

The route between Arizona and  Austin  took us along US Rt. 9 more or less adjacent to the New Mexico/Mexico Border.   We found this sort of unremarkable Geronimo Surrender Monument, but it sported a stunning plaque.

What sort of took our breath away was the statement that Geronimo's surrender ended the military conflicts with Native Americans.  According to the signage, Geronimo surrendered in 1886 and the monument was built in 1928.  Huh?  Wasn't Wounded Knee in 1890?  The language of the plaque was flat out one sided:   It labeled Geronimo a 'hostile' while noting how brave the US troops were.  There was no information at all about the context of the battle or about the Apache perspective.   

Always amazed at the 'history' we learn along the road. 

Rt. 9 is a two-lane highway that mostly parallels "The Wall" as it winds east though the Sonoran desert in  southern New Mexico.  There's nothing to see but cactus, sage brush, mesquite, palo verde trees (these are cool-- they photosynthesize with their green bark) and many, many  -- about one every 10 miles -- green-striped,  white Border Protection vehicles,  each manned with one or two agents.   We also saw (but were afraid to photograph) two detention centers, three blimps that watch the border, a couple of big cameras, or what looked like cameras, on really tall poles.  What we didn't see were any people -- only one other car passed us, and there's one tiny town (Columbia) about midway through New Mexico.  These are all Internet photos:

Rt. 9 ended abruptly as it dumped us into densely populated  El Paso, TX,  We took a break there to walk through a small and lovely botanical garden on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).  Worth going to if you are in El Paso.  There's an associated museum that was interestingly closed because they couldn't provide heat.  Texas isn't used to getting cold. 

We did start off  our return trip to Arizona driving west on Interstate 10, but unless someone is sick or hurt or wants us to show up for some reason, we don't seem to drive in a straight line.  We thus detoured from  Interstate 10 to visit Carlsbad Caverns in southern New Mexico.  It was worth it. 

We dropped back into Texas, to the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains.    Its the astrophysics lab for the University of Texas in Austin, 400+ miles to its east.    Worth seeing:  

Despite all of this equipment and technical and organic (brain) power no one yet can explain the Marfa Lights that can be spotted just after sundown and just down the mountain from the McDonald Observatory, near Marfa, TX.  This is my snapshot of the only one we saw.  It was a really strange bouncing white light shaped like a globe and seen on the horizon. 

Yep!  Scroll up and see the tiny  white globe that is the real deal. We stayed two nights at a rest area until we spotted it.  It appeared, as promised, on the horizon a bit after dark,  and behaved a little like a ping pong ball that has hit a table at an angle. It danced up and down, left and right,  did some circles and other goofy stuff. The lights are said to appear only about 30 nights a year, so we were thrilled with this one.  That these are real does not seem to be in question, but what they are --well, nobody knows.

Marfa is an art colony with really big art installations.  

Because fences prevented us from getting to a full frontal view of this desert sculpture,  it's really hard to see why this pile of shipping containers in front of rail road tracks, is called Sleeping Figure (and not, perhaps) Train Wreck). Even when you can see it with a straight on view, it takes a view minutes to justify the title.  It is nifty either way.  Artist Matt Johnson. 

 

John Carney created his honorific 'mural' to James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor in the Movie "Giant".  The car radio blared out period appropriate tunes and the car seemed to move, but it didn't.   The mural is on Rt. 90 just west of Marfa, TX. 

Next stop:  Organ Pipe National Monument in southern Arizona.  The camp ground is lovely and we stayed three days,  with a full cadre of National Forest Service Rangers on hand.   The monument  contains the northern-most range of Organ Pipe Cacti . 

  

I didn't get this person's name, but she treated me a private tour of cacti species and said she was a seasonal volunteer.   She was extraordinarily nice and knowledgable. She's holding  a roomy woodpecker's cactus nest, but the bird didn't build it.  Actually called a cactus boot, woodpeckers (and other birds) hallow out the space  in the cactus and then the cactus builds this structure to seal the lesion, using  a waxy sap.  The space remains and the woodpecker moves in, and returns every year.   

Another important tidbit about her was that she, a volunteer, was still there when we revisited two weeks later after the great National Forest Service Firings.   She was helping the one civilian employee who runs the visitor center store. We saw no rangers.  When I brazenly asked how many folks they had lost she told me "This Park has been affected and that's all I can say".    What?  What about the First Amendment?  

This guy is my new favorite bird.  He a Gambel quail.  These guys live in groups,  make squeaky little sounds as they run around eating whatever it is they eat from the ground. They run when startled, only flying when they have to, I guess.  He has six black feathers that form a goofy little topknot.  I am easily entertained.

We left Organ Pipe to  cross its southern boundary -- the US/Mexico border --to spend two weeks in Mexico.  A beach and many sampled tacos were involved. Those details will be in our next post, but here we are from the future:  i.e. after we got back from Mexico and back to Tucson. 

We did explore Tucson with its many unique barrios, for a couple of days. It is a UNESCO World Heritage City of Gastronomy, so designated in 2015 for its development  of Sonoran Food.  Truly, after all the tacos we ate in Sonora, we came back to Tucson and liked the tacos, tamales, and even the Sonoran hot dogs and elote pizza (yes, those are things) so much better than what we actually ate in Sonora.  Sorry Sonora, and thank you Tucson -- you are a nifty city.   

WOYAYA