The world is our play ground

Instead going to the MDT rally in Tucson, we head to Benson Escapees co-op park to look for some peace and quiet. We drove through the dust storm  with 25 miles cross wind all the way. The trip is about  110 miles. The rig now handle very good with the heavy batteries in the front compartment. The weight made a big different. We arrived safely in the wind and heard that a 10 vehicles accident on I-8 where just a few miles from the highway we were travel. It involved two RVs and an elder couple from Oregon died. They closed down the interstate for hours and we were lucky heading in the opposite direction. We arrived Escapees Benson Co-op RV park and got a boondock site #602 for a day and move to a full hook up site #225 next day. We were happy and enjoy the great mountain view from the lot. We sign up a so call “hot list” for a lease lot and we are number 399 in the waiting list. The park has about 300 sites. It will take several years for our turn. This is the only park allow under 55 to come in.

Tucson & Benson, AZ

Here we are at Lot # 225, it belongs to a SKP Boomer “CooK”. We were told they are out for the year. The lot is large, we were fit quite well. We will be here for a month and take care of the rig and work at IBM remotely. We extend for another month here at Benson. Wow, we liked the scenery and the nice weather even it get windy once a while. Padraic upgrade his camera to Nikon D70 and a new zoom lens 18-200 mm digital which equivalent to 28-300mm on the old 35mm film camera.

Bisbee is a beautiful art city in AZ. It is only 60 minutes from Benson. It was a 19th century large mining town. It had produced large amount of mineral like copper and gold. A fire destroy most of the town in the turn of the 20th century and later got rebuilt. The mining business soon become not profitable and the town now are artists haven and tourists are the key industry. The buildings in the Bisbee street is absolute charming, beautiful and interesting from the eyes at the 21st century.  Bed and Breakfast Inns are full at the weekend in when the big city dwellers escape for a arts retreat. We arrived late of a Saturday and visit a few shops and ate at a popular restaurant downtown. The town is small and we can drive around in just half an hour. There was a art auction in the night for charity. We checked out the Real Estate posting, the prices are near Dallas Texas prices. So it is kinda reasonable for house and land. We are start looking at a real estate price sand get faimilar to either invest or get a lot for our RV home base down the road.  We eager and watching the slow down on price increase and try to use it as our advantage.

Pima Air and Space Museum is a huge exhibition of air planes in Tucson, AZ. Padraic got to visit all the planes he knew over the years. Willie had no clue on airplane but she asked a lot of intelligent questions as her usual cute way. We spend fives hours of walking and see each plane close up and personal.  There were your typical of F-14, F-15 and F4. There are three huge B-52 in three different paint schemes.  All the B-52 are build in the 50s, that make a lot of pilots who fly them are younger than the planes. There are many transport planes including  the Hercules, Galaxies class and a NASA rocket transport plane, I think they called it the grump.  There a few Migs from the communist block country include those famous  15, 17 and 21. We hears so much of these plane when we were growing up during the Vietnam conflict. The Mig Vs the F4 Phantom which is my favorite plane for a long time. Later the F-14 became my favorite. There is one F-14 there and is not in very good shape. There is huge hanger there to memorize the B-17 bombing squadron during WWII mission in Germany. One very restored B-17 is on display and maps and pictures of many crews who flew them. It was a big operation to bomb Hilter’s Germany. Maps show number of mission and the anti aircraft gun location during the war. Many young pilots and gunners pictures are on display.  The gun turret on the B-17 flying fortress is very interesting and cramp for a person to operate the machine guns. On the B-17, there were machine guns from the front along the sides, top and bottom everywhere to defend the plane from German fighters.  It was impressive and massive. We got away the bravery of the young men who defend the country. The exhibition was alive with sights and sounds. It was a memorable experience.

We spend  a afternoon at the famous Tombstone, AZ. Old west mining town where the famous gun fight took place. It was 20 minutes from where we stay in Benson. It is a tourist place now.

Lot of tourist shops which Willie likes. We ate at a local restaurant and just handout watching the horse carriage ferry tourist around. People was dress up in the old west clothing and hang round at saloon. Dirt road and horses are all round.

Padraic was invited by new friend jack and Jeanne for a few 4x4 trips in the Benson area.  They are the Boomers friend from the park. On Tuesday every week, the Benson residents Boomer went for 4 wheeling

in the wilderness. We usually go for a whole and had lunch in the middle of the mountain. These was the 2nd opportunity after Quartzsite on the 4 wheeling experience.  Padraic loves the opportunity of taking picture at places where no tourist had gone before. There were usually four to six off road vehicles in the group. Jeanne loves to take pictures and has a Nikon D70 camera.

Padraic and Willie went to Pima Observatory  west of Tucson to see the world largest collection of telescopes. They are at 8000 feet altitude, snow was present in April. Willie went for a snow ball in this picture. These pictures were taken by the phone Treo 650 camera. The color and resolution is much lower than the Nikon D70. The telescopes are amazing and we had fun.

Padraic was working for 4 weeks to complete the Outback 2800 watt inverter with MX60 Solar charger project. It was a fun but long project. He had add 750 AH inverter capacity to the 5th wheel along with the 660 AH from the truck. Now we have abundant of power while we boondocks. Now all is left from power point of view, are solar panels. There might be a while since we are starting to travel soon. The extra power has a elaborative design with extra attention to safety and flexibility.

Padraic & Willie stayed in the park for two and half months, part working on projects on the rig, part paying tax around April 15 (17). Thanks to her brother Nick. Willie finally found out and fixed her depression after finding out her medicine was no longer working. Now the new medicine really help and put her back on track. We had great experience in the Benson co-op park. Lot of elbow room, the SKP people are very friendly. We had a nice scenic view, we were going to miss this place once we leave the area. We were heading north to Sedona.