Arizona December 2017

We hope you all had a great holiday season. Holly and I and some friends went to the Arizona Temple of Latter Day Saints in Mesa to stroll the grounds and enjoy the Christmas decorations. The grounds cover a whole city block and there isn't very much of it without lights and decorations.

It was very relaxing and enjoyable to wander and look at all of the lights and scenes of the birth of Jesus Christ. There was Mary and Joseph and the three wise men .

I don't know how long it must of taken to put up all of the decorations and lights but I can say that just from hearing everyone there it was appreciated by everyone.

We went to the Arizona Commemorative Air Force  Museum on one of our outings and learned a lot of new things. At least I did. Holly is much smarter then me and probably already knew how a airplane  rotary piston engine works.

I love museums like this. They had displays that you can get up close and personal with. The mechanical side of me loves to able to see how they mount stuff like bombs and guns on these fast movers and how the wings fold up on the planes used on air craft carriers.  You can see how the engines are mounted and on the older prop planes you get a real perspective on the size of the planes and engines.

If you thought your car's dashboard can be confusing at times take a look at the inside of the Phantom II from above.

I know that most people know what the table setting above signifies. But do you know what the meaning is of everything on the table? They had a sheet explaining everything and I was enlightened by it.

I have often wondered how those pilots of old got up the nerve to jump in the old by-planes. Wood and fabric and paint held together with screws and wire. Nope not me, I don't even like flying in the modern stuff.

They have an operating B-17 on site that you can walk through. Well sort of anyway. When you first climb up thru the hatch in the nose you crawl up into the plane before you can stand up.

After you stand up you can see the pilots and co-pilots seats and the navigator-bombardier-nose gunners position. Then you turn looking towards the rear of the aircraft and you are looking at the top turret gunners position. The front of the aircraft is very crowded when everyone is at their battle positions.

You then walk towards the rear and through the bomb bay area.  You needed to step over an air frame and then down to the walk way. Nope no steps and after my back surgery it took me a while to figure that one out.  That is Holly at the other end waiting for me. It is a very narrow and tight walk way. I now know why there were no large people on B-17's.

This is the radio operators position. On take off and landings the crew all had seats in the middle of the air craft but once airborne they went to there assigned positions.

The tail gunner had to crawl over the rear wheel housing and back to the tail of the plane there he kneeled down to man the guns. No seat or laying down on his knees. Then there was the poor ball turret gunner. He entered the turret from inside the plane thru a hatch after he was in they closed the hatch which he used as a back rest. The hatch was armor plated to give him some protection. He more or less laid  on his back with his legs up on each side of his guns. Sounds a little more comfortable than the tail gunner but a little cramped for space.

The sign said this was a troop transport. I expected to see row of canvas seats down each side but this must of transported higher ranking troops as you can see from the shot below.

Nope have no idea what model this is but it had a lot of guns on it and a pretty girl on the side. Inside the bomb bay were a lot of signatures from former service members. Some were from former flight crews with dates of service.

Our son Mike introduced us to Geocaching a few years ago. That's where you go and find hidden treasure that others have placed (there is an app for it). There are caches hidden all over the world, that's right the world. When you find one you have been looking for there is usually a log to sign and sometimes little trinkets. I like to leave little plastic steam engines. Then you log it on the app under your name and it marks it found and keeps track for you. There are also trackables that people can move from cache to cache. If you start one it can be tracked as it moves. It could find it's way to a foreign country.

Before we headed west this last fall Mike gave me a trackable coin (it has a serial number on it)  to place somewhere for him. I found the perfect spot in Yuma Arizona. It was in a cache hidden under the tender of this Southern Pacific steam engine. Hopefully the next person that takes it logs it in their list then logs it out to the cache where they dropped it. If done right Mike will be able to track it as it moves. Hope it has a good journey.

While in Yuma we took a little trip to Mexico  and did a little shopping. The next day we drove up to Castle Dome City. It is a old mining ghost town. There are several mines in the area. They mine silver, gold and lead. The biggest mineral mined is lead. During WWII the mines worked around the clock supplying lead for ammunition for the war effort. 

This is Castle Dome. There are several mines in the area but only a couple are still operating.

As with most mining towns there were several bars. This is just one of the many.

There was a little cafe/gas station/garage. I have never heard of this brand of gas but I sure do like the price per gallon. The very last picture is a machine that was seen in gas stations all over the country. Some will know what it is and the rest of you are way too young to know. Well that ends our little 3 month vacation in Arizona. My back is healing nicely and I can sure tell the difference.

We have moved on to our new winter job. We will be spending the rest of the winter in Elephant Butte State Park. I know we have been here before, twice before to be exact. We figured this was a good place to finish my recovery as we already know what the job requirements are. There are a lot of new people here so we will have a chance to make some new friends. Well that's all for now. We'll be looking forward to seeing everyone next month. Everyone up in cold country stay warm and the rest of you stay cool.  Adios my friends.