Greetings From Tucson

We moved on to the city of Tucson on April 1st. It wasn’t that far away from our last campsite in Coronado National Forest, so we had time to stop in the Tucson REI and spend some of our dividend. After that we looked up local bike shops, with Google telling us that the number one bike shop in Tucson is the Ordinary Bike Shop. It’s right by the University of Arizona and apparently right in the middle of the hipster district. We dropped off my bike to fix that front wheel (damaged in Key West – you can read about it here) and walked around the corner to the Cafe Passe coffee shop and bar.

Maybe a half hour later, the bike shop called with bad news: the rim on my front wheel was too badly damaged, and so not fixable.

Well, shit. To make matters worse, nobody stocks this wheel. And I mean, nobody – the guy at Ordinary Bikes called every bike shop in Tucson. However, he did tell us about the upcoming GABA Bike Swap.

Well, we weren’t sure if we were going to still be in the area by April 9th or not, so we thanked the shop for the info and carried on. We camped that night at a free area along Reddington Road and watched a pretty spectacular sunset.

Well, I watched a spectacular sunset. Michael got a sandbag workout in.

Priorities, I guess.

Reddington Road is a beautiful area – all full of saguaro and ocotillo cactus.

The sites themselves left a bit to be desired, as they were all right next to the road and had lots of trash and broken glass. But it was free, so we kept the dogs tied up and enjoyed the view.

See, the whole reason we came to Tucson is that I had a bucket list item to check off.

The Boneyard.

Officially, this site is called the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, or AMARG, and is an aircraft storage and preservation facility that’s part of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. When I passed through Tucson back in the 90’s, you had to get written permission from the Air Force to get into the Boneyard, and that could take up to three months. Needless to say I missed my chance back then.

Nowadays the Boneyard tours are offered three times a day through the Pima Air & Space Museum. I wanted to make sure we made a tour (sometimes they sell out) so we arrived early. The temperatures were in the mid-70’s and I was pleasantly surprised to find covered parking.

Covered solar parking. I saw these types of parking structures all over Tucson. Pretty cool! Even though dogs are allowed in the museum, they’re not allowed on the Boneyard tour, so we left Bailey and Elvis in the truck.

I was so excited about to see the Boneyard that I could barely contain myself. So it pains me to say that I was just a teeny bit disappointed. See, the tour is a bus tour. And while it’s a very nice bus, with big, clean windows, at no point is anyone allowed off the bus. So all my pictures were taken through a tinted window. I did my best but as an amateur photographer, I just think these leave a lot to be desired.

There are over 4,000 aircraft stored at the Boneyard, which opened just after the end of World War II. Some of them have reached their maxiumum flying hours, some need updated electronics but there’s no budget for it. At the Boneyard each aircraft is stripped down, sealed up against the dust, and left in the desert.

Davis-Monthan was chosen as the depository for these aircraft for three reasons: first, the humidity there averages around 10%. Second, the area averages 12 inches of rain per year. Third, the dirt there, despite being so sandy, is actually quite firm – the hardpack is strong enough to withstand the weight of a C-130 Hercules. (This saved the Air Force tons of money, as they didn’t have to pour concrete or anything like that.)

All the aircraft are kept in tidy little rows.

Engines are stored separately…

Some of the aircraft can be made flight-worthy again. Some of them are kept because other nations still use these aircraft (like UH-1 helicopters or F-16 jets), so the Boneyard is the place to get spare parts.

There is also a section of the Boneyard for planes that will never fly again. Slowly these aircraft are being stripped down for parts.

Aircraft held up with plywood, aircraft missing their tail or nose sections. It looked like a junkyard. I love things that fly, so this part was actually a little sad for me.

After the tour, we checked in on the dogs and ate a little lunch before heading in to the Pima Air & Space Museum. When I was here before, this place was a lot smaller, and you had to walk underneath a Sikosrky Skycrane just to get in.

The entrance is much more modern now, and Pima is one of the largest aircraft museums in America, taking up 80 acres and showcasing 300 aircraft.

They still have the Skycrane, by the way:

We spent all afternoon touring this fabulous museum and looking at all the planes. They have this really cool selection of “nose art.”

This collection was actually a wall of nose sections, taken off planes that could not be salvaged. Here’s my favorite:

There were all sorts of cool aircraft outside, too – trainers, jets, presidential planes. We even saw NASA’s “Vomit Comet.”

And Michael got to have a little fun, too.

You know, he thinks planes are cool and all, but this is the second major aircraft museum I’ve dragged him to in two months (Pensacola was the other). So if this is what it takes to keep him sane, well….