Day 33 (Tuesday, July 27th) Multnomah Falls

Today we drove up to the Mt. St. Helens area but only after driving a short distance to see Multnomah Falls. We discovered that we were only about 20 minutes from the falls and since it's a short drive day, we didn't need to leave until later in the morning. Multnomaah Falls is the second tallest continuously running water fall in the United States.

The boys were very impressed with the falls and how high they were. John and the boys even made the hike up to the top (about 700 feet above the parking lot on a 1.25 mile trail). Tyler was so excited that they jogged up the first half of the trail. There's a platform at the top that lets you look over the falls and the views of the Columbia River gourge were fabulous. The boys thought it was so cool that the water falls so far that it turns to spray in the air even before it hits the rocks.

Day 32 (Monday, July 26th) Oregon Coastline and the Spruce Goose

We stayed put at our campground in Portland, but took the day to drive out to the coastline of Oregon. On the way there we stopped to look through the Evergreen Air & Space Museum, where the Howard Highes plane, the "Spruce Goose" is located.

We started at the Spruce Goose and it's a good thing we did some research before we left beause the museum is so much more than we'd ever imagined. As you drive up the entrace you're greeted by a building under construction. Mounted on the roof like a hood ornament is a Boeing 747.....a real one. The building under it will be an indoor water park when construction finishes, later this year. The rest of the museum is three huge buildings, although one is just a couple of planes and an IMAX theater. One of the two largest buildings is an air museum and the other is a space museum.

To begin with, the Spruce Goose is the largest mono-hull seaplane ever constructed. It's 290 feet long, 320 feet in wingspan, and over eight stories tall at the tail. We got to go inside the aircraft and listen to people who helped restore it for display. It was driven by eight 3,000 horsepower engines and actually flew before Howard Hughes hid it away and went into hiding. In the same air museum building are about 60 other aircraft, ranging from a replica of the Wright Flyer through WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam era aircraft, fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, and transports, and ending with modern day jet fighters, Learjets, and more. There's actually an exact replica of a Sopwith Camel (Snoopy's ride) and the Fokker tri-plane of his (cartoon) enemy, and real-life WWI ace, the Red Baron.

Building two is dedicated to space and contains exact replicas of the lunar lander and lunar rover. There are Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury capsules, a Titan missile, a SR-71 Blackbird, a real Sputnik, some re-entry vehicles, space suits, and an amazing amount of other stuff. We were glad we did our research because we needed several hours just to walk around the vast exhibition areas. There was always something new just around the corner.

After we left the museum, we drove the rest of the way out to the coast of Oregon and drove along the coastal highway for about 40 miles. There was a lot of cloud cover right on the coast and the temperature was in the low 50s. Naturally, we were still dressed in shorts and t-shirts so it was pretty brisk when we left the truck. We got out on the beach and let the boys put their feet in the Pacific Ocean. Kim had warned them that it wasn't warm, but they were both shocked. They had a contest for who could keep their feet in the surf the longest; Jake won, but couldn't feel his feet after about 40 seconds. Kim, of course, laughed until she almost cried. We got to see some amazing coastline and wandered through a couple state parks to see lighthouses and bird rookeries. It was a long ride back to the trailer, but the trip was worth it.

Tomorrow, we'll check out Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge and then pull the trailer up nearer to Mount St. Helens.

Day 31 (Sunday, July 25th) Portland Oregon

On Friday and Saturday we drove up from San Francisco to Portland. We finished the trip in Portland early Saturday. The drive was uneventful, but particularly scenic because we were driving right down the middle of the Cascades. It was incredibly gorgeous! We usually had beautiful mountains for background, lush pine forests surrounding us, and the river alongside us. The road mostly follows the river and goes between the big peaks, so there were only a few large inclines to get over and the drive wasn't too bad. The scenery and the road were certainly different than the deserts of Nevada and the central valley of California.

After settng up camp on Saturday in a very pretty campground, we drove over to Kim's uncle's house in Lake Oswego, just south and east of Portland. He and his wife Penny have a brautiful home right on the bank of the Willamette River. A lot of Steve and Penny's family was there and it was great catching up with them; the boys were five and two years old the last time we were here. Steve and Penny set out a delicious dinner for us, but not before Jake and Tyler got to experience tubing on the river. Steve has a two-seater tube that he tows behind his motorboat. He let the boys get used to being bounced around and then sped up and took them outside the wake. You should have seen their faces! I was laughing so hard and the boat was bouncing so hard that only about half of my pictures even came out! Steve has promised them some more tubing for tomorrow and the boys can hardly wait.

Dinner was a Koho salmon that Steve had caught himself. My mouth still waters just thinking about it. It was delicious! Steve's brother, Bill (another of Kim's uncles), drove up from Baja, Mexico and he arrived only an hour after we did, so it was an even bigger reunion than we'd expected. He didn't drive up just to see us, but he did time his trip so he wouldn't miss us. He also remembered to bring some ice-cold Mexican beer which I helped him drink!

On Sunday we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast and went back over to Steve and Penny's. The boys got to go out tubing twice more and although they got a fair amount of air-time, the never managed to get flipped over or thrown in the water. I'm really not sure if they were relieved or disappointed. On the other hand, Holly our Labrador retriever, was hard to keep out of the water. She'd have been willing to fetch sticks out of the river all day. She's completely in her element on the banks and in the river.

As the afternoon progressed, Steve and Penny started to get ready for their family vacation so we packed up and headed back to our trailer for a good night's sleep.

Tomorrow will be a long day of driving and being tourists. We'll be heading out to drive along the Oregon coastline. We're also going to make a side-trip to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum to see the "Spruce Goose," Howard Hughes gigantic seaplane, so it'll be a full day for us.

Day 28 (Thursday, July 22nd) Muir Woods N.M., Napa & Sonoma Valleys

Today was our 2nd day in the San Francisco Bay area. We started by driving out to Muir Woods National Monument. Our prolonged stay in Las Vegas forced us to cancel our original side trip to the Redwood National Park, so we went to see the giant redwood trees near San Francisco. We had to drive over some small mountains to get there and the last few miles, we were inside the clouds! The trees were simply majestic and we were all in awe! The trees at Redwood N.P. are about 25-30% bigger, but none of us had ever seen anything like the ones at Muir N.M.! We walked around in hushed silence, simply awed at the incredible majesty of trees that are the oldest living things on earth. Some were seedlings around 900 A.D. We went early and missed most of the crowds which arrived as we departed. It was a good thing that we came early because the bus-loads of other people would have ruined the special moments we had there!

After we left the Redwoods we went on our tour of wine country. We drove up to Sonoma Valley and then to Napa Valley and back to Sonoma Valley. We'd chosen four vineyards to do wine tastings at and we'd also signed up for a family tour at the Beringer Vineyard. It seemed like there were hundreds of vineyards in the valley, so it was probably a good thing that we picked a specific four to taste at and took our time at each of them. None of them were particularly stingy with their samples. The boys weren't entirely bored, either. There were places for them to play, gift shops to paw through, and some pretty entertaining sights.

The boys also joined us on a short tour of the Beringer Vinyards and a tour through the original Beringer house at the site of their original processing plant. The vineyard tour was interesting and well-narrated by one of the employees and included some tastings. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in their cool tunnels. The Beringer house was built in the late 1800's and was a showpiece of magnificent woodcrafting and glass. They lived exceptionally well......even by todays standards.

This was a nice laid-back day and we thoroughly enjoyed it!

Day 27 (Wednesday, July 21st) San Francisco, CA

Yesterday, we drove out of the Nevada desert (Finally!!) and into San Francisco. While it was nice to be with John's friend and his family, we'd had enough of triple digit temperatures. We lost about 59 degrees between when we left Boulder City and arrived in San Francisco (Vallejo, to be exact).

We got up this morning to a chilly, cloudy morning and had a relaxing hot breakfast. We headed into San Francisco to do some sightseeing. Unfortunately, we forgot to order tickets for Alcatraz so we spent the day seeing the sights in the city. The first stop was Lombard Street. We stopped to take pictures from the top and bottom and let the boys run up and down the hill. Traffic was much too heavy for them to run on the road itself but they got a kick out of running on the sidewalk. After taking pictures, we drove down this "curviest road". Very cool!

From Lombard Street, we headed over toward the waterfront. We walked over to Hyde Street where the cable cars turn around. You can no longer just pay for a short ride on them; but have to purchase a full day pass. This was more than we needed and didn't want to pay $52 for a 5 minute ride so we took pictures of them and then went over to Ghiradelli Square and got a free sample of their delicious chocolate. We walked along the beachfront and out onto the Hyde Street Pier. On display was an old paddle wheel ferry boat, a tug boat, and an old cargo sailing ship and we got to wander through all but the tug boat.

By the time we finished on the pier it was dinner time and we were all starving. We headed over to Fisherman's Wharf to see about getting dinner. It would have been neat to get something from one of the seafood vendors and eat outside but it was far too cold for that so we opted for one of the restaurants instead.

After dinner, we went over to a view point by the Presidio to take pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog was rolling in pretty quick and the mist was settling on us but it the bridge looked realy cool in the fog.

Tomorrow, we'll do a tour of wineries in the Sonoma and Napa Vallies.

Day 25 (Monday, July 19th) Las Vegas, NV

Things are looking up! The Ford dealer called to tell us that the truck would be ready by 5:00pm. We used the morning to shop, do laundry, and get the trailer ready for an early start tomorrow. Finally, we drove to the Ford dealer and picked up the truck; the manager had even had it detailed for us so it looked like it was new! We dropped off the rental car, had some lunch, and headed into Vegas.

After parking in Bally's garage, we walked to the strip and started by watching the tail end of one of the fountain shows at the Bellagio. After that we walked all the way through Caesar's. The place is HUGE! At the far end, we stopped to watch the animatronics show, "The Battle for Atlantis." The kids thought the gigantic robots were pretty cool!

After that, we headed over to the Mirage. We were too early for the volcano eruption, so we walked over to the Venetian to check out the gondolas. Kim thought we might want to ride in one, but when she found out that they were electric powered and not really propelled by the gondoleers, we decided it wasn't worth the wait. We headed back out to the Mirage and got a ringside seat for the eruption. That was impressive and the kids loved it! Flames blasting out everywhere, erupting water that was colored bright orange and red by hidden lighting, and awesome sound effects all had the guys totally amazed!

After that, we headed back to the Bellagio to watch another of their fountain shows. We'd never realized just how gigantic and complex each of those shows was. The pond that the fountains are in must cover more than 4 acres and you can't even see the whole show at once because it's just so wide! Their sound system is also amazing and we decided to keep our spot on the rail and watch the next show too. It's hard to imagine how much horsepower it must take to shoot all that water that far into the air. A couple added to our entertainment by having their wedding right in front of us at the Bellagio Fountains! We were having so much fun and being so entertained that we just didn't want to leave!

Of course, we did have to leave, so we walked back through all the crowds and got back in the truck. We drove up to Fremont Street and got out to stroll. We saw rock bands, dancers, musicians, magicians, and painters. There was a saxophonist that had three saxs and played quite well. Jake really enjoyes that part! There was also a painter that did entire landscapes and even pictures of outer space using only spray cans. We were absolutely amazed by what he was able to do with spraycans and some newspapers and cardboard. You'd never believe that they were done without brushes! Within a half an hour the gigantic show started on the ceiling! If you didn't know, Fremont Street is a three-block area where the entire area above the street is a gigantic projection screen, like the scoreboard in a football stadium. Everything else on the street stops, even the tourists; everyone just lloks up!After we watched that show, we finally headed home. We hope to get a few hours of sleep and be on the road by 5:00am. It'll be more than 600 miles to San Francisco tomorrow!

Day 24 (Sunday, July 18th) Las Vegas, NV

We got up late and headed over to Brett's house, today. After lunch we spent another couple of hours swimming with the dogs to cool off. The boys had a lot of fun! After the sun started to set, we all got dressed and headed down to Las Vegas for our eagerly awaited tour.

We started by riding up to the top of the Stratosphere Tower. The Stratosphere is an 1,100 foot tall tower that stands way above the rest of the casinos and hotels on the Las Vegas strip. The upper observation deck is open-air and is 906 feet high. There are several thrill-rides up there and Jake has been droolong to ride the "Insanity" for months. Insanity is a spinning ride that holds eight people. The thrill is that the ride, once loaded, pivots out into space over the edge of the tower. Then, it starts to spin until the riders are pulling 3 Gs. This causes the seats to pivot and swing out 45 degrees until the riders are looking straight down, 906 feet to the strip! They're spinning in space at about 30 miles per hour, hanging over the edge of the building! Needless to say, none of the adults felt the need to join him, but now he can say, "Been there, done that, got the t-shirt!"

Once everyone had their feet back on the ground, we had a late dinner and went for a tour of the Las Vegas Strip. We didn't have alot of time left after dinner so we settled for a driving tour of the Las Vegas Strip. We drove up and down and took a few pictures, but most importantly, we got a good idea of where everything was so we could go back and walk around. Our hope is that the truck will be ready soon enough, tomorrow, for us to trade in our rental car and drive back down to the strip. We hope to get out and walk around to see the sights we'd most like to see. If we get back into Vegas early enough, we'll have a nice easy stroll on the strip and maybe even get to drive back and visit Fremont Street.

Day 23 (Saturday, July 17th) Red Rock Canyon, NV

The temperatures are still above 110 during the days so we're lucky that John's high school friend, Brett lives in Las Vegas. We went over to Brett's house and we got to catch up a little on old times. We went out to lunch and were joined by Brett's family, including his mom. After luch, we went back to Brett's house and spent a couple of hours in the pool (along with our Lab, Holly and Brett's Lab, Ridgely). It was pretty entertaining with four adults, four kids, two retrievers, and two other dogs circling the pool constantly. After we spent a couple of hours cooling off in the pool, we drove out to Red Rock Canyon for a driving tour of the amazing landscape. Apparently the whole area started out as some of the biggest sand dunes the world has ever seen, but then the whole area became calcified and hardened into rock. The colors and stratification were georgeous and we'd have loved to be there for more sunsets and sunrises. As the sun moved, everything kept changing and we could have spent days looking around and walking on the short hikes through the park. Of course, it was about 114 degrees, so went didn't spend too much time out of the car. We hope to come back some time during the winter months. When the sun finished setting we went to the Visitors' Center because the Las Vegas Astronomy Club had set up an open house. Brett is a member and helped us with a running narrative on the equipment. There were about 25 telescopes of all types and some were huge! We got to see the moon (up very close), clear views of Saturn and its rings (along with two clearly visible moons), and a number of other stars, nebulae, etc. It was really fun and educational for the guys! By the time we finished, it was a little too late to hit the Vegas strip, so we went back to the trailer and got some sorely needed sleep. Tomorrow, we go back for more swimming and go see Las Vegas. Jake is dying to find out if he fits the size requirement to ride the "Insanity" ride on the top of the Stratosphere. Needless to say, no one else in the family is interested in hanging in empty space over 900 feet above the Vegas Strip!

Day 22 (Friday, July 16th) Boulder City, NV

We're still stuck in the Nevada desert outside Las Vegas with our truck in the shop. It looks like we'll get our truck back by Monday afternoon, so we'll have been delayed here for 4 days and we'll need to do some rescheduling to make up the time. We've decided to skip the Los Angeles and wine-country legs of our adventure and will go directly to San Francisco, instead. On the bright side, John's best friend from high school lives in Las Vegas but was working out of town for our originally scheduled visit. Ironically, he was back in Maryland. He's returned so we'll get to catch up on old times, swim in his pool, and he's offered to be our guide in Las Vegas for the weekend. With temperatures reaching 112, I think we probably won't be too active in the daylight, but we're looking forward to two evenings of seeing Vegas after the sun starts setting. When we finally do get on the road again, it'll be a relief to get out of the desert because our air conditioner doesn't really do a good job of keeping the trailer cool in this kind of weather. Most full-timers out here have two smaller air conditioner units that combine to put out more cool air than our single larger unit.

Day 21 (Thursday, July 15th) Hoover Dam, NV & AZ

We rented a car this morning so we figured we'd make the best of a bad situation. After a leisurely breakfast, we drove down to take the dam tour at Hoover Dam. There may be bigger dams in use today, but it's still an engineering marvel! The dam is over 726 feet high and 1,244 feet across. It's 45 feet wide at the top and 660 feet wide at the bottom. I also found it interesting that the dam has it's own police department, but it's so far away from anything else that it's understandable. The dam is also such a high risk for terrorism that they're building a whole new highway and bridge to bypass the dam (see picture). That highway should open in a few months and no one will ever be able to drive across the dam again. They have a relatively new parking garage for visitors taking tours so we parked in the shade and walked down to take the Dam Tour. There, we first watched a video about the constuction in 1931-1935. They ran 24/7 shifts the whole time and finished early and under budget; pretty amazing by today's standards of delays and cost overruns. After the video we took an elevator down to see one of the gigantic intake tunnels, called "penstocks" where we got a lecture on how the dam operates currently. From there, the water goes down tubes that get smaller and smaller so that the water moves faster and faster, and finally spins the turbines. When we finished there, we went to the turbine room on the Nevada side of the river (8 turbines on Nevada side; Arizona has 9). It was pretty impressive to find out that we were standing 425 feet below the level of the water in the lake behind the dam! The turbine area was huge and really impressed the boys even though we could only see the top third of the turbines! The pictures don't really let you realize the scale they built on! They had to build factories, on site, to manufacture a lot of the parts because they were too big to transport from the outside! They built an entire city (Boulder City) to house all the workers (and their families) for the dam project. That included stores, hotels, schools, and hospitals. They told us that 96 men died during the construction, but the myth that they were drowned in the cement is fiction. They dumped in such vast areas that new deposits were only a few inches deep. An interesting piece of trivia is that Hoover Dam (originally Boulder Dam) isn't even in Boulder Canyon; that was just the original favorite of the two original prospective sites. Because they were already calling it Boulder Dam, they kept the name even though they actually built it in site #2, Black Canyon. Of course, it was later renamed for President Hoover, who was a strong proponent of the project before he became president. Another neat piece of trivia is that electricity generation is actually a side product of dam. I had always thought it was built primarily to make electricity, but the dam's main purpose it actually to ensure the steady and continuous flow of water to all the farm lands and orchards below it, in southern California and even in Mexico. Without the dam, all that farmland will flood like areas around the Mississippi do. Lake Mead also provides drinking water for areas as far away as Tuscon, Arizona. They just use this regulated, released water to make electricity as a bonus. The sale of that electricity paid off all building costs and continues to pay for operation and maintenance of the entire place. The dam doesn't cost taxpayers a cent. After the tour, we walked around the outside of the dam and walked across to Arizona and back to Nevada. The dam is so big, you can't even get the whole thing in one picture without a wide-angle lens or taking a helicopter tour.

Day 20 (Wednesday, July 14th) Truck Trouble

This was a driving day. We were supposed to leave the Grand Canyon, drop a few thousand feet of altitude, cross some desert, go up and down a few more mountains, and then drop down and cross over the Hoover Dam as we went from Arizona to Nevada. We'd climb up into Nevada for a few miles and finish by setting up camp about 10 miles before Las Vegas.

Apparently all the climbing and crossing the desert caused a lot more heat than I thought because I boiled off a lot of coolant and didn't know it. All three of my temp guages (oil, trans, and water) stayed right in the green until the water temp slammed up into the red and pegged without warning. We'd just found that the road going over Hoover Dam isn't part of the Interstate Highway System for a reason. Interstates max out at 6% grade. The road from the dam up to Boulder City has a 10-12% grade and goes on for miles. It was a brutal climb for my truck.

You guessed it, that's where it all happened. The needle pegged, the instruments beeped at me, and I grabbed a piece of the gravel shoulder. As I pulled off the road some white smoke came out the tailpipe so I risked cooking my turbo-charger's oil-cooled bearings and shut the engine down without letting it cool. We were two miles from our rv park............

We have a nationwide towing service for our truck, but I had to sit in the desert heat (110+) for about two hours until they arrived. Kim, Holly, and the boys got a ride with a Boulder City police officer and sat it out at their station until the tow truck dropped me and the trailer at the campground. He took the truck to the closest Ford dealer and left it for service.

Tomorrow I find out what got broken and what it'll cost to repair, but it looks like we might lose some time while they repair it. Kim and I will start looking at itinerary adjustments to get us back on schedule. We'll also rent a small car and tour the Hoover Dam. We're here for a while so we'll do what we can to make the best of it.

Day 19 (Tuesday, July 13th) Grand Canyon, AZ

We arrived at our campsite at the Grand Canyon only a little before the sun went down last night, so we didn't get to see the canyon until today. During our drive up here we gained about 6,000 feet in altitude so our weather has been fantastic! Mid 80s in the day with low humidity and down into the high 40s at night. It's usually about 55 degrees when we get up. The climb showed the limitations of my truck. There were some long, hard pulls up 6% grades. A couple of the climbs slowed me into the mid-20s, but we learned to shut off the air conditioning and on most climbs I kept up with the slower traffic in the right lane.

This morning we got up and took the shuttle bus over to one of the more remote parts of the South Rim and went out onto the Rim Walk. We led the boys out there with their eyes closed and then faced them into the Grand Canyon and had them open their eyes. You should have seen the expressions on their faces! I only wish I'd had the foresight to take pictures. They stayed in a perpetual state of amazement for the entire day! We walked the Rim Trail for about four miles, but had to stop to gawk about a thousand times! Every time you move a hundred yards, the view has completely changed! Near the end of our walk we could see the Phantom Ranch on the floor of the canyon and then the Bright Angel Trail as it wound up the side of the canyon wall. We walked until about 1:00pm and ended up at the Bright Angel Trail Head. The views are hard to describe, but we've included a couple of pictures. After walking four miles in the sun, we were all a little tired, so we rode the shuttle back to our trailer for lunch and a brief nap. As evening approached, we rode the shuttle further west than we had walked to watch the sun go down. Just before the sun went down the the boys got to watch a pair of California Condors flying on and off of the canyon wall. We found a nice place to sit on Hopi Point and watched a magnificent, unobstructed sunset! We finished the day by making tacos at the trailer. Tomorrow.....on to the Hoover Dam and Las Vegas!

Day 18 (Monday, July 12th) Taliesin West, Scottsdale, AZ

Today was another tour-and-drive day. When we got into Tuscon, we realized that one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous buildings (home/studio/school) was in Scottsdale. Instead of staying 2 days in Tuscon, we spent one and drove up here to Scottsdale, yesterday.

Today we drove out to Taliesin West and took a tour designed for parents and their school-aged kids. The tour guide did an incredible job of engaging the kids; there was just us and one other family of three.

Taliesin West is an incredible place! FLW built it in the 1930s, right after he finished Falling Water, in Pennsylvania. He bought 600 acres and built the whole place in a single acre in the middle. When he built it, it was in the middle of empty desert, but now, only the 600 acres keeps modern Scottsdale at bay. He built the place with stones and materials that he collected (with his students) from the surrounding desert and designed it to fit organically into the desert. The details are amazing!

The FLW Foundation still maintains the Architecture School and the facilities. The other Taliesin is in Wisconsin and the students alternate properties, spending the winters here in the desert. There are even some artists that have lived on the property since the 1930s. One of them actually helped build it. There is a Cabaret Dinner Theatre that is still in use that has amazing acoustics, a larger theater, a library, and then there were the Wright's living quarters. We got to relax in his amazing living room and Jake actually got to play a few notes on his Steinway piano. the grounds were even mo

re amazing; mixing lawns, small pools and fountains, and an architectural style that resembled the surrounding hills and desert. It was a truly beautiful place that amazed and surprised you at every turn.

Day 17 (Sunday, July 11th) Pima Air & Space Museum & Titan Missile Base, Tuscon, AZ

Yesterday, we drove from Las Cruces to Tuscon and arrived to temperatures around 103 degrees. We set up camp and spent some time cooling off in the pool. Today was a busy day for us because we've adjusted where we'll be going today and tomorrow.


Today, we started at the Pima Air & Space Museum. We were also going to see the "boneyard" of mothballed Air Force plances, but we found that they weren't open on weekends. Luckily, the museum was more than enough. They had a half dozen hangers full of restored airplanes of all sorts, from the Wright Flyer to modern jet fighters. We walked the "space-program" hanger by ourselves. The guys got to see an actual moon rock and were fascinated by the videos shot from the moon and the videos of the "vomit comet" where astronauts trained. They really liked the nickname the most. After that hanger, we took a guided tour through a couple more hangers and then took a tram ride out onto the grounds where the rest of their over 300 planes are sitting. The driver kept a constant stream of description coming for over an hour. Jake and Tyler never stopped being fascinated by the diversity of the aircraft and their duties. There were quite a numer of experimental and one-of-a-kind aircraft, too. They were amazed at the size of the plane NASA had built to carry Saturn rocket boosters across country. Each of the five engines was too big to go by train and took far too long to ship by barge. There was also one of the last of the propellor-driven Air Force Ones. Kennedy and LBJ were the last to use it and only used it when travelling to areas with small runways.



As we left the Pima Air & Space Musem we headed directly to the Titan Missile Museum. This is the only one of the 54 Titan ICBM silos to survive destruction when they were decommissioned. The original missile with the 900 kiloton warhead was removed, but a practice missile that had an empty warhead and had never been fueled was placed in the silo. We saw an informative video that helped the boys understand what the Cold War was and explained the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction. That triggered some wonderful conversations and led the boys to decide that nuclear weapons are "stupid." We went outside to the silo and started with looking at spare engines and then looked at the silo cover, which was puulled back. The silo had been covered in glass so we could look dwon inside and see the actual missile. After that we walked down six flights of steps and entered the command and control area. Tyler got to swing one of the 12,000 pound blast doors. They were so well built that he could do it by himself, even so many years after decommissioning. Once in the cotrol room, the guide ran us through a simulated launch; explaining all the procedures and codes necessary to get the missile to go to its target. Amazingly, the missile had three possible targets which are still classified today.


After getting back to our campsite, we hooked up and spent the rest of the afternoon pulling our trailer from Tuscon to Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix. The temperature went from 103 to 106. Tomorrow we'll visit Taliesin West, one of Frank Lloyd Wrights' famous homes, studios, and schools.