Adventures in the Southwest

Friends Hiking in Arizona

De Grazia Gallery in the Sun

Located in the foothills of Tucson’s Santa Catalina Mountains, this gallery was designed and built by artist Ettore De Grazia using traditional adobe bricks crafted on site while living among the local Indians. Opened to the public in 1965, it is home to more than 15,000 De Grazia original.

Part of this historic district is the Mission in the Sun built to honor Father Kino, an early missionary in the southwest.

     
Stained glass                                                                       Fabric art

Church painting                                                           Tribal mosaic

Kitt Peak National Observatory

The collection of telescopes on 6875-foot Kitt Peak are located high above the Sonoran Desert under some of the darkest night skies in the world.

 
Telescope domes

Solar Telescope

   
 Inside the optical tunnel                                             Outside the optical tunnel

The solar telescope at Kitt Peak is not longer in use. It has recently been replaced by a new more powerful solar telescope in Hawaii.

See: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/world-s-largest-solar-telescope-takes-its-first-shot

The Salton Sea

The Salton Sea, in southwest California, is a landlocked extension of the Gulf of California. This largest California lake at 35 miles long, 15 miles wide and 235 feet BELOW sea level has no natural outlet; whatever flows in, including agricultural runoff, does not flow out. The sea holds million of fish that feed masses of wintering birds along the Pacific Flyway.

In past wet times the Colordao River would fill this basin. In dry times the river would bypass the basin and the lake would shrink. In 1905, after a very wet winter the Colorado River flooded into this low spot inundating communities, the railroad, the Indian Reservation and a salt company, which never recovered.

 
 Across the Salton Sea

   
San Andreas Oasis                                                    Fruit of the palm

Sitting in the narrows of the Lower Colorado River, Yuma was known as “The Gateway to the Great Southwest.” Beginning in 1864 all military posts in the Southwest depended upon the Quartermasters Depot where the US Army warehouse held a six-month supply of goods. Ocean vessels brought goods to the Gulf of California where they were loaded onto shallow draft steamboats for the trip upriver to Yuma. Supplies were then distributed to army posts overland by wagons.

 
Supply wagon

   
Paddlewheeler                                                            Colorado River

Time for a quick stop.

Shake Chocolate Porter at Prison Hill Brewery

Historic Plank Road

In 1912, to encourage travel to San Diego, local businessmen banded together to build a road on the Sand Hills of the Imperial Valley west of Yuma. By 1915 a 6 ½ mile one lane Plank Road over the Sand Hills route was opened for travel. This original road was two parallel tracks for tires, each 25 inches wide spiked to wooden cross-pieces underneath. Opposite direction traffic was expected to give way in pullout areas in the sand.

By 1916 the California Highway Commission developed an improved road constructed of solid 4 inch thick planks spiked to heavy cross-ties and coated with asphalt. The road, however, was still not wide enough to pass. This road was not replaced by a two-lane asphalt road until 1926.

 
Improved plank road
 

Joshua Tree National Park, California

Where the Mojave and Colorado Deserts Converge

At elevations above 3000 feet the Mojave Desert habitat includes the wide-armed Joshua tree - a unique species of yucca not found anywhere else in the world.

At elevations below 3000 feet above sea level, the Colorado Desert habitat includes that of the larger Sonoran Desert which surrounds Tucson.

Ocotillo in bloom                                                        Among the Joshua trees

   
.               Skull Rock                                                      Hiking through the jumbo rocks

Time now to return to Arizona for a few more adventures with Joyce and Alan.