Heading south...
.... in an Arizona Shuttle van, on IH-10 to Tucson to visit my Aunt Moux.
Myself and 8 other people, counting the driver, Rob. I haven't been to AZ (excluding the odd stopover at the Phoenix "Sky Harbor" airport whilst en route elsewhere) since 1995, when i went to Tempe. But that's a different much longer story. Before that, i spent a summer with my Aunt Moux when i was 17, in 1985. I did landscaping work. It was very hot, and i got very tan. But i didn't mind the heat so much. It seemed kind of purifying, at least until August, when the humidity and monsoons arrived. And the giant frogs came out.
I like the desert, and the mountains. When i see mountains, i just want to go and hike in them. Right now, we seem to be driving in a wide, flat plain. But i can see mountains in every direction. Phoenix seems to be built mostly on the same sort of terrain. Downtown, on some of the streets, you can see dozens of blocks in each direction, and then far off, the mountains. It's kind of the opposite of Austin, which is so hilly you can rarely see more than a few blocks, if that.
About 15 minutes ago, we passed a green & white van and SUV: La Migra (Border Patrol). It has been some time since i've seen that.
This area on either side of IH-10 is pretty much treeless. The little shrubs are green right now, but i imagine that must fade once it begins to get hot. Which is right about now. (It was 94F yesterday.)
Tucson 54
SPEED LIMIT 75
It's partly cloudy today, and about 10 km away, i think i see some rain & haze.
I think i'd really like to live near the mountains, but i do wonder if i'd get used to it, and it wouldn't seem so special. If i lived near some, i expect that the first few months or ever years i'd spend a lot of time looking at them, hiking, just getting to know them. But then what? Would i get used to them? Would the mountains just become part of the background that i don't see most days?
We're driving through some sort of orchard right now that must be at least 100 acres. The trees are leafless. I can't tell what they are. They look kinda big for citrus.
We're closer to some mountains. These are Southwesterny sort of mountains: not too many of the almost-equilateral triangle summits you see in places like Colorado, but strange, asymmetrical peaks or even just sort of butte-like things.
I bought a stupidly expensive steel travel mug at Einstein Bros. bagels. I just hate wasting all those paper
cups, though. It's a weird travel mug; like those peaks, it's not symmetrical. It's not a cylinder or even part of a cone. It looks like it started off round, and then someone sat on it. I found this annoying, because it made it less stable when standing, but it turns out to be the perfect shape and size to wedge in between my seat and the plastic facade of the inside of this van, which was loose and rattling. A cylinder would not have worked so well.
I think i see some snow on the mountains to the south east. Oh! And airplanes? Like small stunt racing ones, doing loops and crazy stuff. I wish i hadn't left my binocs in a restaurant in Iceland. (That was a different trip.) Or maybe that's fortuitous, too: looking through them while riding in a car would just make me more nauseated.
We are passing on the right. There's traffic and a lot of semis as far as the eye can see...
A sign says "Pinal Air Park Rd." There are tons of commercial airliners parked off to the west, about 10 km away. Have i heard that airlines store surplus airplanes in the AZ desert? That's what this looks like.
These mountains look not so young. The Rockies look young. Relative to me, they're all ancient bordering on timeless. i think that's one of the things i like about them. When i'm hiking or camping somewhere isolated, i can forget about the rest of the world and just be. At least until hear a jet liner fly over, 10 km above my head.
Tucson 17
This has been a fast trip.
A giant billboard photograph of an older woman wearing a sun hat, and riding a moped with her feet in the breeze proclaims:
This is life.
(Some retirement "community" ad.)
We have exited the Freeway. I get off at the first stop. perhaps i am almost there?