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arid zone
So here's the background on my trip to Arizona, the one whose musical parts got wrapped up so neatly in that article I posted here yesterday.
The reason I was in Arizona at all was largely to see my old friend RLT and her M. I used to visit them regularly in LA, but several years ago they retired to the mountains above Tucson, and I said "Someday I'll come visit you there. In January."
The previous time I'd been in southern Arizona was for the Worldcon in Phoenix. Iguanacon. In 1978. Labor Day. It was so hot, I said that if I ever return here, it'll be in January.
And this was the year I did it partly because B's nephew is undergoing his internship there and they've rented a biig house in Scottsdale, so I could stay with them for part of the trip.
I spent my first couple of days there, fitting in a visit to Taliesin West - I'd already seen the original in Wisconsin; I love Wright's architecture as art but I wouldn't want to live in it - and dinner with an old family friend. Then I set off on the scenic route to Tucson, by way of the Apache Trail, a mostly unpaved road through the mountains and the Saguaro cactus forests, which I just couldn't get enough of. Other states have trees in their forests; Arizona has cactus. It also led me to some Indian cliff dwellings (quarter-mile walk straight uphill) called the Tonto National Monument, though strangely enough nobody knows why it's called "Tonto". The name predates the Lone Ranger, though.
At RLT's, I saw their cats and we went on a tour of the nearby Biosphere 2, which has long since given up its initial creepy-utopian role as a supposedly sealed-off environment, and is now an ecological research center for the University of Arizona. It feels like an aviary without any birds in it. But the most fun thing I did was going out to M's observatory at night - it's a big plastic shell and dome that protects the telescopes, cuts off backlight, and provides storage space - to view the comet that was passing by at the time.
Then a few days puttering by car through the Gadsden Purchase, a part of the US I'd never visited before. Tucson is a more colorful town than the bland, sprawling Phoenix; for instance, it has a university district with a couple real used bookstores and, down the street, a replica moai.* I had lunch at an unpretentious neighborhood Mexican restaurant said to be full of fabulous wonderousness, which is evidently believed as it filled up with customers the instant it opened at 11 AM, and which features on its menu the trencherman platter identified as the one that Bill Clinton had. I didn't have that. The food was OK, but what made it better than dozens of other Mexican joints escaped me. On the way into town, by the way, I stopped to use an ATM at one of Tucson's most tragic sites, the suburban shopping center where Gabby Giffords and others were shot.
Then on to Benson, home of the utterly fabulous but little-known Karchner Caverns (where cameras are not allowed but they've already taken a lot of pictures) and a good used bookstore out on a ranch (with a store dog and also - outside, of course - store donkeys). Tombstone has a good state museum but is mostly a tourist trap where men in 19C dude outfits prowl the streets, looking for tourists to accost with pitches for re-enactment shows of one shoot-out or another. Outside of town, a roadside farm stand sells fried peanuts, with a bowl for sampling. Eat them shell and all, it says. My advice after trying it: don't. And Nogales, which I visited mostly so that I could cross the border and have my Mexican food in Mexico. (Worth the trouble.) Pedestrian entry into Mexico is easy; you just walk in, and if the red light next to the guards doesn't flash, you just keep walking. Coming back, however, I was faced with about five lines, all leading to staffed booths, featuring confusing acronyms like use this line if you have a WHTI document. Turns out a new passport is one, but it doesn't say that, either on the sign or the passport.
The last part of the trip was the one with all the music in it. First I drove back to Phoenix, getting back there Friday evening in time for the Phoenix Symphony concert. Saturday morning, out to the Musical Instruments Museum on the far edge of town, where I could have spent all day, but I wanted to get down to Chandler for a chamber music concert there in the afternoon, followed by back to Tucson (2-hour drive) for dinner and the evening concert by the Tucson Symphony, then back again to Phoenix for the night. Sunday morning, enough time for breakfast before taking the plane home and then out to an evening concert I was reviewing.
*That's the plural; as best as I can tell it's also the singular, but I feel like the people who write things like "Elbereth was a Valar" except they have no idea they're goofing up.
The reason I was in Arizona at all was largely to see my old friend RLT and her M. I used to visit them regularly in LA, but several years ago they retired to the mountains above Tucson, and I said "Someday I'll come visit you there. In January."
The previous time I'd been in southern Arizona was for the Worldcon in Phoenix. Iguanacon. In 1978. Labor Day. It was so hot, I said that if I ever return here, it'll be in January.
And this was the year I did it partly because B's nephew is undergoing his internship there and they've rented a biig house in Scottsdale, so I could stay with them for part of the trip.
I spent my first couple of days there, fitting in a visit to Taliesin West - I'd already seen the original in Wisconsin; I love Wright's architecture as art but I wouldn't want to live in it - and dinner with an old family friend. Then I set off on the scenic route to Tucson, by way of the Apache Trail, a mostly unpaved road through the mountains and the Saguaro cactus forests, which I just couldn't get enough of. Other states have trees in their forests; Arizona has cactus. It also led me to some Indian cliff dwellings (quarter-mile walk straight uphill) called the Tonto National Monument, though strangely enough nobody knows why it's called "Tonto". The name predates the Lone Ranger, though.
At RLT's, I saw their cats and we went on a tour of the nearby Biosphere 2, which has long since given up its initial creepy-utopian role as a supposedly sealed-off environment, and is now an ecological research center for the University of Arizona. It feels like an aviary without any birds in it. But the most fun thing I did was going out to M's observatory at night - it's a big plastic shell and dome that protects the telescopes, cuts off backlight, and provides storage space - to view the comet that was passing by at the time.
Then a few days puttering by car through the Gadsden Purchase, a part of the US I'd never visited before. Tucson is a more colorful town than the bland, sprawling Phoenix; for instance, it has a university district with a couple real used bookstores and, down the street, a replica moai.* I had lunch at an unpretentious neighborhood Mexican restaurant said to be full of fabulous wonderousness, which is evidently believed as it filled up with customers the instant it opened at 11 AM, and which features on its menu the trencherman platter identified as the one that Bill Clinton had. I didn't have that. The food was OK, but what made it better than dozens of other Mexican joints escaped me. On the way into town, by the way, I stopped to use an ATM at one of Tucson's most tragic sites, the suburban shopping center where Gabby Giffords and others were shot.
Then on to Benson, home of the utterly fabulous but little-known Karchner Caverns (where cameras are not allowed but they've already taken a lot of pictures) and a good used bookstore out on a ranch (with a store dog and also - outside, of course - store donkeys). Tombstone has a good state museum but is mostly a tourist trap where men in 19C dude outfits prowl the streets, looking for tourists to accost with pitches for re-enactment shows of one shoot-out or another. Outside of town, a roadside farm stand sells fried peanuts, with a bowl for sampling. Eat them shell and all, it says. My advice after trying it: don't. And Nogales, which I visited mostly so that I could cross the border and have my Mexican food in Mexico. (Worth the trouble.) Pedestrian entry into Mexico is easy; you just walk in, and if the red light next to the guards doesn't flash, you just keep walking. Coming back, however, I was faced with about five lines, all leading to staffed booths, featuring confusing acronyms like use this line if you have a WHTI document. Turns out a new passport is one, but it doesn't say that, either on the sign or the passport.
The last part of the trip was the one with all the music in it. First I drove back to Phoenix, getting back there Friday evening in time for the Phoenix Symphony concert. Saturday morning, out to the Musical Instruments Museum on the far edge of town, where I could have spent all day, but I wanted to get down to Chandler for a chamber music concert there in the afternoon, followed by back to Tucson (2-hour drive) for dinner and the evening concert by the Tucson Symphony, then back again to Phoenix for the night. Sunday morning, enough time for breakfast before taking the plane home and then out to an evening concert I was reviewing.
*That's the plural; as best as I can tell it's also the singular, but I feel like the people who write things like "Elbereth was a Valar" except they have no idea they're goofing up.