Mesa, AZ Our last few days

Thursday, February 26, 2015
We got the pleasure of getting together with Jim and Jean Donald again.  Wayne and Linda picked us up and we all went to where Jim and Jean were.  We all played the game Jokers & Pegs.  It was a lot of fun!

Friday, February 27, 2015

This is the last night the NSBC group is to be here, so we all met at the Organ Stop Pizza restaurant for dinner.  It was amazing. 

This picture is at one point where all the lights are on.  It is hard to tell but behind each of the glass doors are the pipes for this organ.  The whole room was lit up and the US flag came down as the organist played Star Spangled Banner. It is hard to tell, but there were many different kinds of instruments mounted to the walls and even the ceiling.  In this picture you can see xylophones, cymbals, chimes, various sizes of drums.  It was amazing how the organist controlled all the instruments from the organ.  Notice the curtain on the wall in front and above the organ.

During some of the music played, the curtain would rise and these animal puppets would dance. The room is not lit up so it is harder to get a good picture of the organ.

Here is a close up of some of the drums on the left side, the chimes at the top and some of the pipes to the organ at the bottom.  You might be able to tell there are actually about 6 panes of glass in each section.  Different panes opened depending on which pipes were involved with the music.  Intriguing!!

I talked Tic into walking up to the stage the organ was on and taking this picture.
Organ Stop Pizza is Home of the Mighty Wurlitzer which was originally built in 1927 for the Denver Theatre.  In 1975 Organ Stop purchased it and refurbished and enhanced it. It started out with 15 ranks/sets of pipes and was enhanced to now have 23 ranks/sets of pipes.  It was installed in 1975 and has been played every since.  The current owners of Organ Stop continue to make enhancements so now the organ is 4 levels of keys and is considered the worlds larges organ.  It was truly fascinating!!!  You can go to www.organstoppizza.com to learn more about the organ.

Saturday, March 28, 2015
As I have mentioned before, Tic has started woodcarving.  Here are some pictures of carvings at the woodcarving shop at Val Vista Villages in Mesa, AZ.

Tic's name is not on the board so don't strain your eyes.

 

The NSBC guys did a lot of this!  Hee Hee.

This one is funny!  This is the front.  Below is the back side of this carving.

Some one had a sense of humor!

We leave for Tucson in the morning.  We got to enjoy spending time with several old friends we had not seen in years while we were here in Mesa.  We also made several new friends we will stay in touch with.  We were blessed with wonderful weather while we were in Mesa.  Nice stay.

Mesa, AZ CAF Museum

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Those of you who follow this travel blog probably wonder if we fell over the edge, but no, it is because we have done less sight-seeing and more family-friends kind of visiting.  
We know several families that we have been friends with for many years, and yet this was our first time to the Phoenix area when we had time to visit.
HOWEVER, we met some really neat folks from British Columbia, Canada, and that leads us into this posting.
It was Jim's 60th birthday, and his wife was being devious and manipulative, wanting him out of the scene whilst she prepared a surprise party for him.  Tic was to be an instrument in this great deception.

So Jim and Tic went to the CAF (Commemorative Air Force) Museum in Mesa, AZ.

The entrance to the museum, the men are reading about Arizona military men.

This was just outside the entrance and is a weather vane.  The propeller was really spinning!  It is a replica (obvious to the most casual observer), of a Corsair, which happens to be one of Jim's favorites.

Stinson aircraft with a rotary engine.  Tic is fascinated by rotary engines.

This is the instrument panel in the Stinson.  Check out the "wheels"!  And the woodwork.

Something for the little ones to investigate.

The Mustang every Corvette would like to be.

I did say that Tic is fascinated by rotary engines?; this is a 28 cylinder rotary, 7 banks of 4 cylinders.
Pratt & Whitney R-4360 excerpt from Wikipedia:
The R-4360 was a 28-cylinder four-row air-cooled radial engine setup inspiring the engine's "corncob" nickname. Each row of pistons was slightly offset from the previous, forming a semi-helical arrangement to facilitate efficient airflow cooling of the successive rows of cylinders.

Engine displacement was 4,362.50 in³ (71.5 L), hence the model designation. Initial models developed 3,000 hp (2,240 kW), and later models 3,500 hp, but one model delivered 4,300 hp (3200 kW) using two large turbochargers in addition to the supercharger. Engines weighed 3,482 to 3,870 lb (1,579 to 1,755 kg), giving a power-to-weight ratio of 1.11 hp/lb (1.83 kW/kg).

Tim the tool-man Taylor would like this too!

The next series of photos was truly the highlight of the visit.  A B-17 undergoing restoration.  We were allowed to travel through-out the aircraft; touching feeling, squeezing, and taking photos,  Nothing classified any longer.

 Up the ladder in front of the bomb-bay doors.

Standing at a gunners position looking into the cockpit.  Nose gunner photo was too dark to share.

Still at the upper gun position looking aft thru the bomb-bay.  Tic had to turn sideways to fit thru to the next compartment.  In the next compartment, on the left side is the radios and navigation, on the left are two seats for the gun crew.

This is the mid-ship's gun section.  Roomiest part of the aircraft.  At the rear is the entrance to the tail gunners position.  TIGHT FIT!

Tail gunner had a great view, bet is was frightening at the time of combat.

Great place to visit, neat gift shop, and all the staff were outstanding.  This concluded Tic's part in the great deception and he and Jim were right on schedule.  Jim arrived at his party and was surprised.
Mission accomplished!  

Just in case you did not figure it out, Tic wrote this post since Dusty did not go to the museum.

Apache Trail - Part 2

Wednesday, February 11, 2015 continued

Well, as we continued our drive along the Apache Trail we start to see Apache Lake.

From up the mountain, we can just see the marina at Apache Lake.

As we got closer we found a spot to stop and get another picture.  This is a long lake.

We are at an observation spot near the marina looking up river.  The two houseboats you see are actually anchored.

This is looking down river from the same spot.  We can see another large boat ramp across the way.

The concrete area you can see is where Tic took the pictures up and down river.

As we headed away from Apache Lake we could see this part of the lake that we could not see before.  This is a really long wide lake!  Please forgive all the electrical lines in the picture, but electrical lines were running everywhere.  It was hard to get pictures without them.

As we left Apache Lake and headed to Roosevelt Lake and Roosevelt Dam we went up into the mountains again.  We are heading to the road you can see at the top of the ridges.  It has been a beautiful drive!

As we got to the top of the other side of the mountains, we could see the river running between Roosevelt Lake and Apache Lake.  

We actually got to drive along the river seen in the previous picture.  We determined that the white line along the river is definitely due to lower water levels. We followed along the river for a good ways.

Suddenly we rounded a corner and WHAM there was Roosevelt Dam.

Tic took this picture look straight down from where he was standing in the previous picture.

This is a great picture of the dam.  We learned that indeed the water levels were way down.  However rains could easily result in the water levels rising quickly as the rain runoff has no where to go off the mountains but into the river.

Our path will take us up to that road above.  Interesting wall to support the road, huh?

This is the top side of the dam.  There is muck in the water, but the dark blackish spots are fish.

Here is a close up of the fish.  They were pretty large fish.

We were standing so close to Roosevelt Bridge that Tic could not get all of it in one picture, so he took this short video.  It is a cool looking bridge.

This is a look at Roosevelt Lake.  It is even larger than Apache Lake.

We got to pavement at the dam.  This is Roosevelt Lake on up the road.  See the white rock band near the waters edge.  We were told the lake is down 46ft.

Now we are headed to Tonto National Monument where we would see some cliff dwellings.

This is one of the cliff dwellings.  At the visitors center we were told there was another cliff dwelling also, but it was closed today.  We were allowed to walk up to this. There were two rangers up there available to answer your questions to the best of their ability.  We were told it was only 1/2 mile walk.  Once we got to the top we asked the elevation change from the parking lot and were told 350 ft.  It was a steep incline.

This is a closeup of one side of the large dwelling.

This is the other side of this large dwelling.

This is a look at some rooms that we were not allowed to walk through.

This is looking from the 2nd story of the 3 story part of the dwelling.

 From the cliff dwelling, you can see Roosevelt Lake and in the lower right is the parking lot.  Look how tiny the cars look.

This is one of the walls in the cliff dwelling.  The ranger talked about how fractured the rocks are and yet the cliff dwellings are still intact hundreds of years later.  Apparently the dirt in the area when wet dries like concrete which held the cliff dwellings together.  Some of the previous pictures of the walls show how they look like they have concrete over them.  This is something the cliff dwellers actually did themselves.

There I am headed down.  I did not realize Tic was so far behind me and taking pictures.  

We really enjoyed our hike and the views were awesome.  Our day has been fantastic.  Headed home now.  Been a fun day!