Tony
-
Biosphere 2 Revisited
About an hour north of our base camp in Tucson is the home to Biosphere 2. Originally built in in the early 1980s as a closed-system experiment, it is now owned by the University of Arizona for the purpose of research and education. Lisa and I first toured the facility in 2017 and it is…
-
Titan Missile Visit and a Special Dinner Out
Back in June of 2023, Lisa and I paid a visit to the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site in South Dakota. While there, we toured the Launch Control Site, which included a trip underground to the see the Launch Control Center that was responsible for 10 or so Minutemen Launch Sites (aka missile silos) in the area. It…
-
Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026
Hello Tucson! We had an easy drive from the state park and found a laundromat near the University of Arizona stadium. Laundry day again, ugh. It was nice to drive through the area; not a game day so traffic was light. Fry’s is a nearby grocery store that gives discounts to students on Tuesdays. Nice…
-
Day Trip to Tombstone
The historic town of Tombstone, Arizona is a 30-minute drive from our site at Kertchner Caverns so we took a day trip to see what all the hype was about. Tombstone The town of Tombstone provides lots of free parking to visit their blocked off western-themed main street. Parking was plentiful when we arrived midmorning…
-
Rockhound State Park
When Rockhound State Park opened in 1966, it was the first US park to allow collection of rocks and minerals for personal use. It still does today. Visitors are allowed to keep 15 pounds each. Lisa found a few interesting rocks yesterday along the trail. We saw a more serious rockhound quite a ways off…
-
From Alamogordo to Rockhound
We said goodbye to Alamogordo this morning, but not before helping the KOA staff gather up some of the 900+ luminary sacks they had put out for Christmas Eve. It was a nice morning and we wanted to stretch our legs some before our relatively short drive (134 miles) to Rockhound State Park south of…
-
Kansas Road Trip
Today felt very much like a Kansas road trip as we made our way from Wichita to Liberal. We started out the day with meeting Lisa’s friend, Martie, in Newton for breakfast at Curtis C’s Diner. After a good traditional cafe breakfast we hit the road. The winds were still strong today, but not nearly…
-
Arizona Bound – A Windy Start
For the past 3 years we have spent the coldest of the winter months on South Padre Island in Texas. This year we are heading to Arizona. We had decided we wanted to try someplace different, and as it turned out, we would have been forced to anyway. The county park that we’ve stayed at…
-
2025 Fall Trip Recap
While it was not our intent, we ended up completely avoiding traveling into or through Kentucky this trip while staying at nearly every state it borders (Arkansas was the exception). I guess this is only fair since we spent almost a month traveling throughout Kentucky last spring. 09/27/2025 – 10/22/2025 Overall, the weather was pretty…
-
Grand Ole Opry+
I’ll preface this post by stating that Lisa and I are generally not fans of country music. With that said, we both thought it would be interesting to visit the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. When in Rome, right? We left Cumberland Mountain early and had an easy 2-hour drive to Music City USA. We…