{"id":200,"date":"2016-05-26T20:39:24","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T04:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/?p=200"},"modified":"2016-07-17T06:53:23","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T14:53:23","slug":"day-10-douglas-az","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/?p=200","title":{"rendered":"Day 10 – Douglas, AZ"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have vague <\/a>memories of going to the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum when I was a child; pretty sure we were on a field trip from my grade school.\u00a0 I don’t remember much but thought I’d go back and check it out. On my ride to the museum I noticed the Kitt Peak Observatory<\/a> in the distance, and I had a vague memory of another grade school field trip visit.\u00a0 But we won’t be going up there this time around.<\/p>\n

The desert museum is basically a sidewalk through the desert with plant labels and some exhibits along the way.\u00a0 The sidewalk is very useful since you don’t have to do too much navigating around the cactus, but you still need to be paying attention or you’ll get stuck!\u00a0 This is a Gila Monster<\/a> – they are only out of their burrows from May to June.<\/a>I have no idea how many humming birds are in the enclosed humming bird habitat, but it’s a bunch!\u00a0 They are everywhere and although none of them landed on me, they definitely weren’t afraid.\u00a0 I didn’t get a good picture but I highly recommend the enclosed humming bird habitat, wherever you might find one.<\/p>\n

This is a Harris’s Hawk<\/a>.\u00a0 It is notable for its behavior of hunting cooperatively in packs.\u00a0 When prey is seen the birds will dive bomb one at a time until they catch it.\u00a0 The prey will be left for the dominant female to feed on first.\u00a0 The museum has a free flight experience when the weather is cooler and I was told that it’s not unusual for the birds to see something on the desert floor and start hunting!!\u00a0 How cool would that be.\u00a0 But, the groceries are better at the museum so they always come back – so far anyway…..<\/a>From the museum, I headed for the Saguaro National Park where not surprisingly you will see an abundance of saguaro cactus. I was on the lookout for nests up in the cactus.\u00a0 I’ve seen birds inside the cactus before but never a nest inside the arms.\u00a0 The Harris’s Hawk nests in the saguaro sometimes so I was hoping to show you one – nope.\u00a0 My photo doesn’t come close to capturing just how many saguaros there are, but saguaro cactus are prolific in this part of the state.<\/a>
\n<\/a>On my way south I was treated to several fly overs by some of the A-10 Thunderbolt<\/a>‘s stationed at Davis-Monthon Air Force Base. When I hear the roar of fighter jets, I always think (sometimes out loud) – That’s the sound of freedom; and our freedom is something we all need to think about this Memorial Day weekend. \u00a0 Then I happened to see this F-4 Phantom flown by the Thunderbirds outside the American Legion in Corona, AZ. I think the F-4 with this particular paint scheme is is one of the best looking airplanes in the world, so I just had to share it with you.\u00a0 OOH – RAH\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>That’s for you JB.<\/a>Tombstone has always impressed me as an historic place but not really worth making a destination out of.\u00a0 Well – this time, it’s kinda on my way so we’ll see.\u00a0 I guess if you’re wrapped up in the history of Tombstone it would be more interesting but most everything is new in the town – not even preserved or reconstructed.\u00a0 Boot Hill isn’t new but there are far more people buried there than I thought.\"Boot<\/a>From Tombstone, I was off to Bisbee, home of the Copper Queen<\/a> and Lavender Pit<\/a> Mines. I’ve been to the open pit mine before and my father used to work on the two way radios in their mining equipment. It closed in 1978 but over 600,000 tons of copper came out of this mine!!\u00a0 One of the other things they found in the mine was turquoise – Bisbee Turquoise is among the finest turquoise in the world.\u00a0 I’m sure that taking turquoise was strictly forbidden, but my dad says that a few of the miners used to take it out in their lunch boxes and speculated that they must have rooms full of the stuff at home.\u00a0 It’s difficult to get perspective in this shot but those buildings you see at the top left side of the photo are two and three stories tall.<\/a>I’m close to my hometown on these roads and although I’m not going through, want to wave to Willcox on my way by.\u00a0 I really enjoy the riding in this area, fresh air, friendly people, and roads with enough character to keep your attention – wonderful…..<\/a>Okay – a little long winded for such a short day but this post might have to last you a couple days.\u00a0 I plan to be camping in the Guadalupe Mountains east of El Paso, TX and from what I’ve seen, it’s a remote campground.\u00a0 Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend.\"Day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have vague memories of going to the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum when I was a child; pretty sure we were on a field trip from my grade school.\u00a0 I don’t remember much but thought I’d go back and check … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7qntY-3e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lennysride.com\/2016\/whiskeypapa\/here\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}