UA Engineering Design Day

For the second consecutive year, we attended UA’s Engineering Design Day.  Senior engineering majors presented their two-semester capstone projects to judges and the community.  This year, 616 students from every degree program in the engineering college displayed 118 projects supported by 64 corporate and university partners.  The projects were useful solutions for engineering problems, space-related, biomedicine, renewable energy, and environmental technology.  Each team received $4000 to make a prototype solution and they displayed a large poster, with the problem, explanation of the solution, outcomes, and solution.  The students stood next to their projects and were eager to talk to everyone about them.  We had a terrific time!  We talked with students about everything from self driving cars to reuse of fuel cell byproducts, CPR technique, water distillation systems, autonomous lunar landers, drones for firefighting,  naval drone recovery, wireless body temperature sensors, and more!

Dinner on the Patio

We hosted our neighborhood Supper Club last evening.  We ate on the patio, just as the sun was setting.  Everyone brought a dish to share.  We provided burgers and roast chicken, along with drinks.  A light breeze cooled the evening air, and we enjoyed time with new friends.

Gila Monster

I stepped onto the front porch today and this Gila Monster was sitting in the shade.  Fortunately, Gila Monsters are scarier looking than they are dangerous.  This guy was 14-16” long.  A big dude!

Mariachis!

Last night, we went to the 37th annual Tucson Mariachi Conference Student Showcase.  This was our third year to attend, and we were amazed at the musical performances by the participating students.  Their musical talent and obvious practice is to be commended. Their enthusiasm for playing traditional mariachi music and singing their hearts out, was contagious.  We enjoyed every minute!

Blooming Pink

For just four or five days every spring, this cactus blooms hot pink!  There are 53 blooms today!

Concert at Catalina State Park

Our friends, Rachel and Bill, invited us to an outdoor concert at Catalina State Park late yesterday afternoon.  The duo, KT Classics, played a two hour set (without taking a break!) of songs from the 60’s and 70’s.  We sat under the trees with the Catalina Mountains as the backdrop.  It was a warm evening, and so enjoyable.  Loved it!

Happy Easter!

We wish you a very happy Easter!

With love, Lulu and Papa

Hike to Seven Falls

We woke up to a beautiful morning after an overnight spring rain.  The day's high was expected to be in the 71-72 degrees range, under partly cloudy skies, so we decided to go hiking in Bear Canyon, to Seven Falls.  We took the tram from Sabino Canyon parking lot to the last stop in Bear Canyon.  We hiked, crossing the creek six times, through forests of saguaros, sycamore, and cottonwood trees, with plenty of prickly pear and other cacti along the way.  The sound of running water followed.  The view of Seven Falls was our reward!  Water was cascading down the granite cliffs into clear pools.  There was even a duck paddling about!  On the way down, Papa spied a large natural bridge on the side of the canyon, not visible when we walked up the canyon.  We had a wonderful time and enjoyed every moment of our 6+ mile round trip hike.

Walk in the Neighborhood

I walk every day and this has been the most prolific spring in my memory.  From my walk today...

Notre Dame

The news today of the terrible fire at Notre Dame was a reminder of our visits through the years, to the "world's most visited cathedral and Europe's most visited historic monument, with 12-14 million visitors each year.  Located on the Ile de la Cite in the Seine River, construction began in the mid 12th century and continued for some 200 years."  The Notre Dame was exceptionally beautiful inside and outside, with its rose windows, flying buttresses, gargoyles, and statuary. 

The Notre Dame "is a symbol of Paris, a symbol of peace..."  It is also kilometre zero - the spot from which all distances to other cities from Paris are measured.
I first visited Paris and went to Notre Dame in 1976, on my first trip to Europe.  I was "wowed" by Paris and humbled by the Notre Dame.  My next visit was with our family in December 1992, Papa and our girls first visit to Paris.  We returned in August 1995.  Whitney studied at the Sorbonne her junior year of college, and lived in the 11th arrondissement, just north of Notre Dame.  I spent a week with Whitney in Paris in February 2004.  Papa and I spent New Year's 2009 in Paris, in the Maria’s, again just north of Notre Dame, walking all about the city in freezing cold, arm in arm as all Parisians were.  We were back again in April 2014 for Easter weekend, after spending a week in Normandy with our children and grandchildren.  I posted lots of photos of Notre Dame and Paris here.  Papa and I think of Paris as the “capital of the world.”  It is an elegant, well planned city, with iconic monuments, incredible food, and the best collections of art of any city we’ve traveled to.  We will miss the Notre Dame as we’ve known it.

ASARCO Mine Tour

On Saturday afternoon, we went with our friends Rachel and Bill, south of Tucson to the ASARCO Mineral Discovery Center and took a mine tour.  We arrived just in time for the 2:00 tour, and were bussed out to a viewpoint, to look down into the large open-pit copper Mission Mine, with all its normal activity of trucks and shovels hard at work.  The Mission Mine is a quarter-mile deep, two miles from north to south, and a mile and three quarters from east to west.  About six times the amount of earth moved to dig the Panama Canal has been mined at Mission Mine over the years.

Our next tour stop was at the processing plant, where trucks dump the rock, it is taken by conveyor belt into crusher after crusher, then sprayed with pine oil and water, and put into a large turning vat to separate the copper from everything else.  The copper powder is dried and sent to Hayden smelter for refining and made into copper plate.  It was all a very interesting process to watch.

The history of ASARCO and the purchase by Grupo Mexico can be found Here.

San Rafael Valley

Papa and I left home before 8 this morning, embarking on a day trip to the San Rafael Valley.  It was a beautiful morning!  We drove south on Highway 83 toward Sonoita, through the rolling foothills of the Santa Rita Mountains.

We passed through Sonoita and on toward the Canelo Hills.  We missed a turn and stopped at an old one room school house to get our bearings.

We got on a dirt road headed in the right direction, straight south toward Mexico, and after a few miles, we came over a hill to "Oh my God" point, with a view of the grasslands of the San Rafael Valley and a backdrop of mountains all the way around.  Stunning!

We drove across the San Rafael Valley, south to Lochiel on the border, passing through beautiful winter grassland with grazing cattle, and past the historic San Rafael Ranch headquarters, now an Arizona State Park.  The San Rafael Ranch was the filming location for the movie Oklahoma in the 1950's. 

We stopped at the Fray Marcos De Niza Monument, with it's plaque stating, "By this Valley of San Rafael, Fray Marcos De Niza, Vice Commissary of the Franciscan Order and Delegate of the Viceroy in Mexico, entered Arizona, the first European west of the Rockies, April 12, 1539."

Soon we were winding our way in the foothills of the Patagonia Mountains and toward Nogales, where we ate lunch at Zula's.  Papa ate at Zula's with his family, as a little boy.  We ate there many times over the years when we visited our vacation house in Patagonia.  It was a treat to make a return visit.

Our next stop was at Tumacacori National Historic Park.  Mission San Jose de Tumacacori was established in 1691 by Jesuit padre Father Kino, and declared a National Historic Park by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908.