tucson bone yard/pima air and space museum

cactus in arizona

sentinel peak tucson
massive cactus

black bird SR-71
airplanes in storage

spare engines
all windows covered in white spray on plastic

more planes!

an old boeing 707
old government plane

very shiny aluminium
F-14A 'tomcat'

Thursday 29th September 2011

Today we awoke in Phoenix and planned to travel to Tucson and see the Pima Air and Space Museum. It was about a 240km drive from where we were staying and was a very easy drive. Once we hit Tucson we stopped for lunch and then took a drive to Sentinel Peak which is right on the outskirts of the city. The view from the peak was great as was the weather at a very nice 36 degrees. Arizona is also covered in cactus that grow massive! Everywhere we have travelled in the last 24 hours has had 1000's of these cacti growing all over.

We got to the museum and we had planned to do a bus trip which takes you around the bone yard. There are 2600 acres which hold about 4200 planes. Some of these planes are for regeneration and some are for parts only. The total worth of planes on site is $27 billion usd. The tour was very interesting and lasted for about 1.5 hours. The bus dropped us back at the museum where we spent about another hour or so looking at the many planes such as the blackbird and the tomcat in the pictures above. There are so many different sorts of planes on display that you would need to ask Bronte about them as he is the plane expert.

By this time it was 5.00pm and it was time to hit the road and get to our next stop being Lordsburg New Mexico. We arrived at about 7.00pm where we checked in and then went to the local Mexican restaurant called Kranberry's. The food was amazing and it was priced very well. Once back at the motel I went for a swim and Bronte hit the gym. About an hour later the power went out so we decided to go to bed. I think the power came back on around midnight. Tomorrow we head further east as we get closer to Dallas.