The Great Wall of Leigh Part II

 

 

Before Christmas we were able to construct the partition wall between Leigh's old living room and what will be a new laundry room. While the wall on the other side was finished, the laundry room side needed a lot of professional help.

 

Once the plumber and electrician got done with the really serious stuff then I could cover up all their great work.

 



The first layers of dry wall were stuck in place and then the project really started to look great.

Below is another shot of the room from a bit farther back.

Then Leighanne whipped up a bright coat of blue for the new place. The windows will get a wood blind to match the rest of the house.

 

 

And the final look below. The washer and dryer were cleaned and hauled into the house from the garage and hooked up. The new sink to the right will be a neat addition.

While the laundry side of the room will get many more features added the room will also house their office on the other side; plenty of room for all the stuff and now out of the garage.

Back in Texas

 

While we got back to Texas in the first week of February it has taken a bit to catch up so here are a few odds and ends of the last few weeks or so. It was a really uneventful trip back from the Casa Grande area and by the time we hit the Midland area we were greeted with this spectacular sunset that took my breath away.

 

I said this was a bunch of odds and ends eh. More spectacular in the technological sense was the pipe organ below housed in the Organ Stop Pizza (www.organstoppizza.com)  restaurant in Mesa Arizona. This Wurlitzer theater organ was built into this structure with 6,000 pipes and the console was handmade on the rotating platform with real gold leaf ... not your normal pizza joint. This is the world's largest and most impressive pipe organ with its own wind generating building! There are continuous shows all evening as you eat a great and reasonably priced pizza ... wow.

On a more somber note I took my friend Morgan down to the Titan II Missile museum in Green Valley Arizona, about 20 miles south of Tucson. There were 18 nuclear missile sites around Tucson and this one has been preserved as a museum. I served as a nuclear missile launch officer from 1975 to 1978 and I sat in the chair and at that console where Morgan is sitting some 40 years earlier. The only difference was that when I was sitting in that seat I could send a nine megaton warhead headed toward the old Soviet Union in less than 60 seconds ... brought back some memories. I endured more than 152 of the 24 hour alert periods in this facility and others around Tucson and it was a pretty stressful time of life for myself and our country!

On a much lighter note we saw this metal roadrunner sculpture at the scenic overlook as you approach Las Cruces from the west. We have only seen two live roadrunners in all our time in the southwest ... one in Van Horn at the KOA and then one in our backyard in San Antonio.

We are back in the Dallas area now and are finishing up the laundry room side of the Great Wall in our daughter's house ... first plumbing and wiring, then dry wall and plaster and paint ... bunch of work and the next blog will explain the conclusion of the effort.

Mt. Lemmon

 

Because we had lived in Tucson before we decided to take our Canadian friends up to the top of Mt. Lemmon, one of the things that makes Tucson so unique. It was a perfect 70 degree day on the valley floor and the mountain had had several days of snow at the summit so we decided to take the run up the mountain road.

 

It is about 26 miles from Tucson proper to the top at the ski area and the traffic was pretty bad. The local law enforcement would only allow so many vehicles at the top so we had to wait for a bit for more folks to come down before we went up. As we were waiting at the bottom I got this roadside bit of Tucson foliage. Here's a nice group of barrel cactus starting to blossom, prickly pear, mesquite, sage, and at least some mistletoe thrown in for texture.

 



As you go up each 1,000 feet marks a distinct rock and foliage change. Here are some of the unique rock formations that can look like faces or animals depending on your imagination.

At about 6,000 feet we hit the first snow and of course the warnings about the critters that cross your path in this remote forest region.

Going up further the sky gets even bluer due to the thinning of the atmosphere and really highlights the pine and ice formations above the 8,000 foot level ... beautiful! You have to keep reminding yourself you just left a comfortable 70 degree day only 20 minutes before ... wow.

At the top at the ski lift area we took our friends to the Iron Door Café ... yes the ski lifts and skiing were in use and neat to watch. We've been coming to the café for many years because there is nothing better on a hot day down on the desert than to come up here and have hot chili and corn bread and watch the skiers.  Even though this place has a captive crowd to partake, every item on the menu is well done and served by some really great folks.

After the chili and corn bread we had a fresh baked rhubarb pie that was one of the best we have ever had ... accompanied by fresh vanilla ice cream of course.

Look at the color of that sky at 9,000 feet. Unfortunately as I was snapping the pic of Morgan and Jeanette below, Jo-Anne was very slowly going to the car, not feeling very well, the results of hypoxia or altitude sickness.

My pilot training said let's get down the mountain kinda fast so Jo-Anne could get her land legs back. And we did and had a nice drive back to Casa Grande.

While the whole trip out to Arizona was a last minute decision we have had a great time seeing old friends and places we haven't seen for a while and enjoying the Palm Creek resort and all it has to offer.

Morgan and Jeanette are off west to see other friends and then relatives in the northwest before we see them again in in June back in Barrie. Tomorrow we are off as well back to the Dallas area for a bit and to see what brings us next.