Greetings from Arizona!

Morning everyone, as the title states, I am writing this from the great state of Arizona…..or is it? While I won’t go into details about the people here, I am sure one such person reads these posts, I will say that I’ve been here for almost 4 weeks now and I don’t understand how this place is a desert. It’s rained atleast once each week I have been here, furthermore, it has not been as warm as you would think a desert would be. The days are usually nice and warm, 60-70 but the nights have gotten to the low 30’s! I know at this moment, someone out there is saying something like Rich should have learned that from the Discovery Channel special….well, your right I did, but it’s easy to forget those things.

Anyway, since I have been here the last 4 weeks, I was able to fly Jessica out to visit for the weekend, rather than going home. Even though the weather was on the crappy side (yes is rained again, in the desert!), we had a great weekend. Who knew there was so much to do in Tucson Arizona, we actually had to skip some things I wanted to do.

So what did we do?

Friday
Well, Jessica flew into Phoenix on Friday night at around 11, which was late enough to allow me time to drive up and meet her. That night we were lucky enough to have the option to rent a minivan or pickup truck from Avis. We chose the minivan and were fortunate enough to get one that stunk of gasoline. Needless to say, we enjoyed the trip from Phoenix to Tucson with the windows down and heat blasting. We got to our hotel room and went straight to sleep (I’m not sure if it was from the inhalation of the fumes or the long car ride that did it).

Saturday
We awoke Saturday a wonderfully cloudy, cold Arizona day which Jessica was unprepared for, clothing wise. Luckily, that day we had decided to go to Biosphere 2 (aka Pauly Shores Bio-Dome), which has its own climate. I’ll list the key things I picked up along the tour to save everyone the trip:
1) Biosphere 1 – This is the Earth. Another Biosphere was not built. It must have been asked on our tour well over 10 times.
2) Pauly Shore was not one of the original 8 Biospherians.
3) The original plan for the Biosphere was to allow teams of 8 to live in the Biosphere for 1 year each for 99 years.
4) The first group of Biospherians appears to have consisted of a gaggle of Crunchy Hippies, rather than scientists.
5) The experiment failed, scientists proved that Crunchy Hippies can’t survive in isolation, without a hacky sac (it was a sad story, they forgot it outside).

I forgot to mention, before the biosphere 2 visit, we went to a small Mexican place for breakfast that had really good, different breakfasts. Once the Biosphere visit was over, we toured the downtown (about 2 blocks worth) and ate lunch at a really good southwestern place with amazing fresh margaritas. We actually ate so much for lunch that come dinner, we weren’t hungry. So, rather than eat we went to a movie. Definitely, Maybe……I would definately recommend it, maybe. Once the movie was out, we went back to one of the restaurants at the hotel and had soup and wine (remember it was a chilly day).


Sunday
We awoke Sunday to growling stomachs and a list of things to do so we checked out of one hotel and headed to brunch. I actually remember the name of the place we ate at, Hacienda del Sol. The brunch was amazing and had pretty much everything you could want to eat. During ‘dinner’ the previous night, we were told by the bartender that we had to check out the Desert Museum. Well, we did check it out and honestly, it was more of a Desert Zoo than a museum. We saw tons of different cacti and animals that live in the Desert around Arizona and were even lucky enough to see several Hawks with very very large talons eating (apparently this type of falcon is the only type that hunts as a family, rather than alone).

The drive to the Museum was amazing as it took you through a pass in the Mountains that surround Tucson and into a valley that was nearly devoid of buildings/life. I never saw such a huge expanse of land without anything on it before, not to mention the Cacti that were sticking out of the ground like fingers pointing to the sky.

Sunday started to come to a close and it was way past lunch time so we decided to go to a cereal bar for some lunch. Jessica opted for the Lucky Charms and I got some concoction called s’mores (yes, it was good).

It was at this time that we lost our camera. It must have fell out of the car with my cell phone. Hearing only one crash we grabbed the cell phone and didn’t see the camera. All the pictures from the weekend are gone, yes, even the ones of me posing by every cacti I found, sticking my arms out to imitate it (so cliché I know). Once we found that out, the rest of the night pretty much stunk, dinner was only ok and once done, we went back to the hotel room and just crashed.


Monday
Monday morning was strange; I woke up for work, traveling, in a hotel room, with Jessica there. It was nice actually. Jessica’s flight didn’t leave till 4 that day so she stuck around the hotel until the afternoon, grabbed lunch with me then took off.

The rest is pretty much work for me, Jessica returned to walking the dog every hour and checking with the vet to make sure he is ok after his Kidney Stones…life is back to normal, sort of.

Well, I gotta run and work….I don’t want to be here for another 4 weeks. Hope to see you all soon.