Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson....March 21st....

Our day out today is at The Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson......very much like Duxford with 5 huge hangers, but it also has acres of space outside for the "boneyard".....there are major renovations projects in process....

As mentioned before the Arizona, California and Nevada desert areas have huge aircraft boneyards....

This little Bumble Bee is in the record books as being the smallest plane ever built... 

The BD-5J....painted to represent the markings of the plane used in the Bond film Octopussy......

Today we will see the weird and the wonderful....

This F-86E Sabre was built in 1951 and used extensively in the Korean War....
This is a similar Sabre to the one we saw being tested at Duxford a couple of years ago.....

We rode the tram for the boneyard notated tour....

The Lockheed Constellation....Howard Hughes was the driving force behind the design this of elegant looking triple tailed airliner....

An early Airforce-One...

As our tour guide said "this must be the ugliest aircraft ever".....

A C-130 landing at the nearby air force base....

The gigantic B-52 Bomber....

Yorkieman was very pleased to discover they had a Spitfire....and we learn it was donated by our Hendon Air Force Museum......he had a great chat with two of the ex military pilots who were volunteer guides....he learnt that this Spitfire had a Griffin engine rather than the Rolls Royce Merlin engine...

We got home from another great day out to find our neighbour had kindly switched off the water main as our outside water hose had sprung a leak....luckily there is a very good hardware store in the nearby small town of Kinney....
This lovely old car was in the car park....

These yellow "buds" are actually the remains of last years flowers....
This cactus will bloom again late April....

It was an interesting and full but very good day, well worth a visit....we had hoped to also visit the nearby Military Boneyard and take the tour but there is a 10 day wait list...
Beautiful blue sky and will be 94F tomorrow....
Not sure if I mentioned in an earlier post that a Cougar was spotted in the RV Park the day before we arrived....
More soon from The Happy & Warm Campers....

Mount Lemmon Scenic Drive....Monday 19th March 2018

We head out from our home at Desert Trails RV Park to the other side of Tucson for the 28 mile scenic drive to the summit of Mount Lemmon....
Camping buddies advised us to download an App from the University of Arizona, The Mount Lemmon Science Tour...very interesting and informative commentary following the road/route as we drove to the top....

Ocotillo....the spiny cactus....hummingbirds feed on the nectar from the red flowers....
Talking of hummingbirds I was walking around the RV Park early one morning (ummm cue for a song !!) and the most beautiful green hummingbird hovered in front of me and then followed me for quite a while, I wasn't wearing a bright colour or anything....a lovely experience...

After 4000ft elevation we loose the saguaro and cactus as they can't survive the cold winters....
The road is just visible from this viewpoint one of the many pullouts and viewpoints on route...

Pretty Cirrus Clouds.....

From 4000 to 6000 ft elevation the terrain is rock formations, with balancing rocks and hoodoos....

Mount Lemmon was not named after the yellow fruit but after botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon who in 1881 was the first woman to trek to the top of the mountain....

A view of the road taken from Windy Point....

Windy Point....a big expanse of slick rock and fabulous views....

Apart from how does it balance there...this rock formation reminds me of a Chinook Helicopter....ok I have a strange brain....

The summit is 9,700ft and a ski area...after 6000ft the landscape changed to pine trees and alpine type terrain...

A great day enjoying the scenery and information of this area....
Back home in time for late sundowners...
 There was a lovely crescent moon this evening and a clear sky....we have very little light pollution at this park.....

News from Lindford is more snow.....
Our neighbours sent us great snowy pics....we love this snowman that they built......
More soon from The Happy We Are Here Campers....

Bakersfield,CA to Tucson,AZ via Barstow and Ehrenberg....9th-16th March

Friday March 9th and we are on route to Tucson Arizona via two overnight stops at Barstow and Ehrenberg......
We head back up into the Tehachapi Mountains on a nice spring morning...the rolling hills are very reminiscent of parts of UK....

It's a pleasant drive...this is a major route but fairly quiet this morning...

We were fascinated by the different styles of wind turbines having only ever seen the "standard" ones and there were plenty of those too...these have different types of "poles" and much smaller blades...

The Tehachapi mountain range is on the edge of The Mojave Desert...a huge wind farm area....we have only ever seen more in Desert Hot Springs/Palm Springs, California...

The  Mojave airport was opened in 1935 to serve the gold and silver mining industry, it is now an industrial park for more than 60 companies engaged in flight development and a storage and reclamation area for commercial airlines....it is one of many airplane "boneyards" in California & Arizona.....

I have included this pic as a bit of nostalgia from our visit to Death Valley and the Borax mines and to once again marvel at the distances the early settlers travelled in such primitive conditions....

Saturday 10th March....
We stayed overnight in Barstow (route 66) sadly this visit not enjoying the delicious pecan pie at Peggy Sue's....The Colorado River and farewell California hello Arizona...
It was a wet drive to Ehrenberg today even on the 110 miles across the Mojave Desert...this road trip has had it's share of rain but at least we are not suffering the snow and disruption back in Blighty...

Sunday 11th March and a beautiful blue sky morning after yesterdays rain...
We are heading east on I-10 to Tucson, a long but straightforward drive to Desert Trails RV Park and our home for the next two weeks.....we stayed here in November...quirky and haphazard but a very friendly "snowbird" park...
Yorkieman once again does a great job of backing into our spot then we head over to meet up with camping buddies John and Elaine for a welcomed sundowner....
Monday 12th...
Our host Pericles has a Monday morning information talk, very entertaining and informative and coffee and donuts !!!!

We've had some fabulous sunsets at Desert Trails RV Park....

Time to hike the trails straight from the RV Park...
I love this pair of "dancing" saguaro....

Eagle eyed Yorkieman saw Wile e Coyote as we were hiking the trails from our RV Park......this pic on telephoto and taken by himself as even when he pointed out the spot I still didn't see him !!!!
More news from the desert soon from...
Yorkieman and Mrs Blogger.....

Our Home On Wheels...26th February to 9th March 2018

Well our Delta flight from Honolulu to Los Angles was certainly an experience....
We arrived in our 54 seater coach at Honolulu airport with a couple of hours or so before our 10pm flight spent in the Delta lounge complimentary through our Amex card so far so good.....our flight was full, boarding was a mess with no interaction from the crew not even a welcome smile....I could go on for pages about the safety aspects but will condense it down to we have never had such an awful flight and bizarre crew ever !!!! All of the crew were very "strange" and very strangely dressed, one member was dressed in a red short slinky number and never spoke a word, the guys were dressed in black, but it didn't seem to be a uniform, the other female crew member was scruffy  ...(maybe it was dress down Friday on a Sunday !!!) plus they all acted like they would rather be some place else !!! Wish I could have taken pics...
The worst aspect was the safety....one of the guys had a mug of coffee in one hand and his phone in the other and playing some sort of a game during taken off and landing after insisting, quite correctly, for us in exit seats not to have anything around us or in our hands...
Insult to injury we got missed on the drinks round !!! that needless to say was corrected...as I say I could go on but....
We then had a 2 hour layover at LAX before our 51min flight to Las Vegas....this one was fine, Compass Airways on behalf of Delta....the Australian 7's Rugby Team were on board, Yorkieman had a chat with a couple of them....as it was now light we were able to see the spectacular scenery as we flew over the Granite Mountains and the bottom end of Death Valley....
Brrr it was freezing at 08.00 in Vegas !!! 
We are staying today/tonight at The Residence Inn, South Las Vegas where we stayed last time...really like this hotel staff very friendly, good breakfast etc etc...they also let us check in early at no extra charge !!! 
A couple of hours sleep then a walk over to the big Outlet Mall at the back of the hotel, lunch and retail therapy what more could a girl want....
Tuesday 27th Feb.....taxi to the storage and my goodness what a lot of dust on our home and truck but all ok....
Hitchin' Post RV Park & Motel for 3 nights to get set for the road and have the trailer brakes repacked. 

Lamb Boulevard, North Las Vegas and once again we have "made" it rain in Vegas....6 out of 7 visits it has rained, the locals love us !!!!

Friday 2nd March...
The iconic Stratosphere on The Strip.....

More of the Vegas Skyline as we head south on the I-15 to Bakersfield California...

Just a few miles from "The Strip" and the sprawling city of Las Vegas and we are into the desert.....

The huge solar power facility at Ivanpah not far from Las Vegas just inside the California state line.......
They have an innovative way of storing power all to do with molten salt and 3 huge towers ....Google it, it makes fascinating reading....we flew over the facility on route from LAX to LAS.....

Still I-15 south and through part of the Mojave Desert...it is a route we have travelled before and the rest areas are still closed supposedly for repairs but more then likely to save money but there are always truck stops and we have our own facilities !!!

Oh no...rain clouds are gathering....

By the time we get to our home for the next week in Bakersfield, CA it's raining and we have heavy rain all day tomorrow.....

Steep grades as we start the descent from the Tehachapi Mountain (road elevation 4,900 ft) down to Bakersfield...

We didn't actually get around to it but we had planned to come back up to view the Tehachapi Loop...a .73 mile long spiral tunnel for the Union Pacific Mojave Railroad.....very similar to the one we saw at Rogers Pass, Canada and quite fascinating...

Second day at Orange Grove RV Park and beautiful blue skies and much warmer..
It's a perfect RV Park and not just because there is complimentary coffee and yummy donuts very morning !!! 
Our song during the stay was of course Johnny Cash, The Orange Blossom Special....

During the day we have the place more or less to ourselves....every night they are full (still lots of space around us as the sites are large) and they often have folks in semi hook-up overflow areas...
The snowbirds are starting to migrate north....we have thought that Washington State must be empty during the winter !!!

Love how they topiary the trees...
Bakersfield is in a very fertile valley not only oranges but all sorts of nuts and grapes are grown in this large region...
It is surrounded by mountains with the valley getting very hot in summer, 115F is a norm...
The lass in the office said and I quote "in summer it's the armpit of California" because the pollution gathers in the valley...
More soon from Yorkieman and Mrs Blogger...