I went away! And now I'm back!

I really enjoyed my time in Tucson - Dr. Rural, wherever you are, and other Tucson advisors, the Desert Museum was wonderful! I was six inches away from the most gorgeous mountain lion I've ever seen (okay, it was on the other side of some one-way glass. But still). I loved going through the hummingbird aviary and catching these little irridescent flickers out of the corner of my eye, and seeing the wee birds hover, eye level, checking out the visitors. One grandma was wondering if one of the birds would alight on the bright pink fake flower in her granddaughter's hair. I took a bunch of pics, but will have to upload them later because I'm using my old digital camera and it doesn't want to talk to the new and shiny computer.

I drove out to the San Xavier mission church, and from a distance it looks spectacular, but they were holding a pow-wow, and while I'm sure the pow-wow would have been really cool (and a source of spectacular fry bread), I was too cheap to pay to park, and also not quite up to tackling a pow-wow on my own (there were a fair number of people at the Desert Museum, and I'd been expecting to wander round a mostly-empty church on my own, not to negotiate crowds), so I bailed. Hopefully I can see it close up sometime.

Otherwise I kind of pooped out and drove around a bit and then hit my hotel - I'd had to get up really early (on SPRING FORWARD morning, GAH!) for my flight so honestly I was kind of exhausted. I took a long bath in a tub that I don't have to clean, and went to bed early.l But it was a fun visit. I really enjoyed seeing the desert landscape and the mountains (to this northeastern girl, there's something really astounding about driving towards the mountains and then realizing that all that vertical stuff is a sea of huge cacti!).

Now off to give an exam. More later!

Comments

[trillwing]

Glad you had a good time. There is an awesome essay, BTW, on the Desert Museum in Timothy Luke's book Museum Politics. He concludes that the hyperrealism of the museum may actually be contributing to the death of the actual desert. Very interesting reading!

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Ooh, I'll have to look for that, trillwing - thanks!