kevin_standlee | Stage 10: Tucson to Tempe (With Muesums)

Today we drove from Tucson AZ to Tempe AZ, covering merely 128 miles. But that's because it was Museum Day.

First was the Pima Air & Space Museum and its vast collection of airplanes and space hardware. Four hours is not enough time here. To even begin to do the place justice, we should have spent two nights in Tucson, been at the museum when it opened, and stayed until closing time, and even that might not have been enough. We skimmed over lots of things and I feel like I left a lot undone.

travelswithkuma seemed to like it, though.

Kuma Bear says, "Dis place is Da Bombs, too?"

Nearly 200 photos in the Flickr set. I feel bad about not having anywhere near enough time to label this stuff.

After lunch, we made a third attempt at the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum. This time, they were actually open. This is a small, free museum, and we spent less than an hour here, including a chance to go inside the locked enclosure and into the cab of their steam locomotive.

Here one of the museum docents (a former steam locomotive engineer) shows Lisa and other museum guests around their star locomotive. They are raising funds to make her operational again.

More photos of the trains, museum, and depot in the Tucson Train Station Flickr set.

Having had our fill of museums and knowing that we still had miles to cover, we hit the road for Tempe. This drive had more excitement than I wanted. First a minivan and then a big-rig almost sideswiped us. Then, as we were getting ready to leave a rest stop, my phone went off with the emergency alert signal warning of dust storms in the area. Fortunately, those weren't as bad as feared. There was intermittent and sometimes heavy rain coming in to Tempe, but not too awful.

After moving in to the hotel and getting some stuff done, we headed to downtown to eat at the restaurant we enjoyed so much during the last Phoenix-area Westercon, My Big Fat Greek Restaurant. Their menu appears to have changed a bit since we were last here, but we were able to get what we wanted and we liked it. This is the sort of long-term economic impact that is impossible to measure when a convention comes to town: long-term repeat business, even from people who aren't local to the convention.

I have more I'd like to write and more photos I'd like to post, but I'm very tired and need more sleep. We're off to Las Vegas tomorrow for two nights at the Venetian before we head home. Unfortunately, I have at least four hours of Day Jobbery to get done while I'm in Las Vegas so that it is on the desired desk by Monday morning, and that means the stay might not be as restful as I would like.