Tucson Attractions

The main reason for going to Tucson was for the biking but Tucson also has a lot of interesting attractions. Since we were in Tucson for a week we did have time to check out some of the more interesting things Tucson has to offer. 

 When I was up in Catilina I took the morning to checkout Biosphere 2.

 

If you remember, Biosphere was started as an experiment to see if a closed system could be created that would be self contained and support 8 people for two years without any intervention. Although the goal wasn't fully achieved a lot was learned about creating a closed system. You can read the full story here. 

 

Today Biosphere 2 is managed the University of Arizona and is used to simulate and research different biospheres and how different environmental factors affect the environment. For example they have a ocean part where they have coral and can change the temperature of the ocean and see how it affects the coral. As part of their research they are learning how to mitigate some of the affects of global warming.  

Tucson has one of the largest air museums in the country. The Pima Air & Space Museum has 5 hangers of aircraft's indoors spanning airplanes from the Wright brothers to the moderate jets. They also have 80 acres and 360 different aircraft's outside. They not only have most US military and commercial planes but a lot of planes from other countries including Russia. They also have some very rare prototypes that I have never seem before. 

 

I could go on for paragraphs about all the different airplanes but if you are really interested in the museum I suggest you check out the exhibits page where you can take a virtual tour of the outside displays. 

 

Sunday we took a day off the bike so I decided to check out the Tucson Botanical Gardens. It was a small but well designed garden. Since this garden is in the desert it mainly featured desert plants like cactus and mesquite and other desert plants. There is actually quite a diverse set of plants that can grow in the desert. This is the bloom season for some of the cactus so I got a few pictures of those

 

They also had some other area featuring non desert plants and had a butterfly garden as well as some art galleries. 

 

 

It was definitely worth the trip.  

 

During the cold war just south of Tucson was one of the main areas where the US had nuclear missile silos. Today one of those silos is a museum and you can actually go down into the silo and see a simulated launch of a missile

 

 

 as well as the missile itself.

 

For me this was really cool for me because I use to work with a couple of ex air force people who actually manned the silos and told me a lot of interesting stories about their time in the the silo. Also the satellites I used to work on were launched using the titan missile so the scape suit and theodolite shown in the museum were more than relics as I actually had seen them in use. 

 

The best attraction we saw in Tucson was definitely the Sonora Desert Museum. This is a botanical garden, zoo, aquarium, hiking trail and playground all rolled up into one. I went there not only for the gardens but for the humming bird aviary. I got there early and had the place to my self for a little while. I did get a decent picture of a humming bird but the light wasn't great. 

 

I did however get an amazing picture of a dragonfly. Click on the picture below to see the detail I was able to get. 

 

We spent about 3 hours walking around and visiting all the exhibits. There was a lot to see. There are quite a few animals there include coyote's wolfs, Javalina (which looks like a pig but isn't), bear, mountain goats, sting rays and of course some iguanas just walking around. It was really a well run and interesting place that I would visit again if I was in the area. 

 

 

So Tucson is more than just biking there are a lot of interesting things to do if you ever visit. 

 

 

 

Tucson Biking Part 3 The Loop

You would think that after climbing Mt Lemmon that we would want a day off the bike but Jack said he felt okay and wanted to do a recovery ride. Tucson has probably the best bike trail system I have ever seen. They call it The Loop and it is a series of over 130 miles of connected paved bike trails around the city. The plan was to head to one of the many parks along the Loop and do an easy out and back ride.

 

 

Of course since this was a Tom ride the park we planned to start at was closed for construction. We found another one close by (I always have a backup plan no matter where I ride now). Right after we got on the path there was a trail closure which we ignore and walked through and around a few hundred feel of dirt and construction vehicles to get back on the path. 

 

Once we were on the path it was great and the perfect way to recover from the previous days climbing. 

 

The part of the Loop we were on followed the Rillito river. Now this is Tucson which is a desert and doesn't get a lot of rain so the river is a dry wash of sand and dirt that only sees water during the monsoon season in July and August. There is a path on both side of the river so we went down one side and up the other. On our way down there was one part of the trail that was not complete and just ended. Luckily we saw another biker at the end of the trail and he led us through a parking lot and on to the next segment. 

 

The Loop is more than a nice paved bike trail there is also a sand/dirt path next to it for mountain bikes and horses. There are parks and bathroom every 5 miles or so. There are also numerous hiking trail that start from the parks around the Loop so if you are doing any outdoor activity in Tucson chances are you going to be using one of the many facilities on the Loop.

 

Like any multi use trail some parts get crowded with people walking/riding and we did encounter a few spots where we had to slow down a little to get around a few people and bikes but considering it was a Saturday it really wasn't too bad. 

 

The view along the trail are tremendous as we could see Mt Lemmon and the other mountains surrounding Tucson. There were even a couple of sculptures along the way.

 

 

We ended up doing a slow 20 miles in our out and back loop and it was a good way to recover and see why the Loop is probably one of the best bike path systems there is in the country.  

Tucson Biking Part 2 Mt Lemmon

When I first thought about a trip to Tucson climbing Mt Lemmon wasn't in the plans especially since we would be coming in March before I had a lot miles in. Most of the rides I was considering were in the 1500 feet range in elevation and grades of 2-5% nothing too hard. As the trip grew closer I looked a little more at the Mt Lemmon and the actual climb. It started around 2500ft and got to 8000ft at a more or less constant 4-6% grade. I did not think I could get to the top but I could at least start up the climb and if it sucked just turn around. 

Mt Lemmon is an iconic climb that that lures serious biker into giving it a try. I had downloaded a route from the Cactus Cycling club that went up to a little over 5200 ft in 14 miles and then turned around. I didn't know how far I was going to make it but I had a goal of riding at higher elevation than I had ever done before. That shouldn't be hard because the highest I think I had even been on a bike was Mt Greylock which is around 3400ft. We were starting at 2500ft so if I could get to 4000ft I would be happy.

We started the ride at 7am because we didn't know how long we would be climbing and because it was going to be a hot day. We had about 4 miles at 2% to get to the base of the mountain before the real climb started. At the first hairpin I looked to the right and saw the wall I was about to climb and didn't think I had to gears or legs to make it around the first corner. Then I did. And I got around the next corner and the next and kept climbing. The bike I had was a compact and had some low gears so I was able to kept grinding away. 

At mile 7 I stopped at a scenic overlook for a break. (In case you didn't notice I just climb at 4% for 7 miles)

 

Dorothy was there as she was our sag in case we needed water or any other help. I took a few pictures and kept grinding away.The road had a wide bike lane so you really didn't have to worry about the cars going by. A lot of bikers climb this mountain ever day so the cars are use to them. The views are amazing which kept me distracted from the climb. 

I passed 4000ft without a problem and kept going. As the profile suggested the grade was pretty constant so as long as you find a gear you could grind in you could kept going. 

There were a couple of steeper parts in the 5 to 7% range but I kept climbing. I was maintaining a 5-5.5 mph rate but I could feel myself slowing down and getting tired. I stopped at mile 10 for a break and a stretch and then started again. I stopped about a mile later but pushed myself to kept going. About a mile later when I stopped again my legs were wobbly and I knew it was time to head downhill. I could have pushed myself and gone another mile or two but I didn't want to cramp or pull a muscle since we still had a few more days of biking left. 

As I turned to go downhill I thought about that fact that I'm on a bike that I'm not familiar with. Not sure how well it had been maintained. It had disc brakes but I hadn't really had a chance to really test them out. BUT and I repeat this with emphasis I just spent 2 solid hours climbing 12 miles and I deserve to enjoy the downhill. In other words I'm bombing down this motherfucker even if it kills me...

...Which it didn't. I spend a glorious 20mins speeding at around 30mph down hill. The bike held together and handled well and the brakes slowed me down when needed. I stopped a few times to enjoy the view and easily made it back to the parking lot. 

Jack on the other hand kept climbing. Jack likes long and hard climbs and has traveled to Europe just to do some of the iconic climbs there. His goal was to make it to the top. Some may say that Jack can be a little pig-headed or stubborn when he has a goal in mind but I would call it more determination than anything else. 

After I got back to my car I changed and cleaned up a little before driving back up the mountain. I stopped at some of the overlooks to enjoy the view and take some more pictures. Somewhere between 6000 and 7000 ft I caught up with Jack who was still grinding away. Like a fan at the tour de France I clapped and cheered him on as he went by. After that I caught up with Dorothy in their car and we waited for Jack to pass us before moving on to the next parking spot or overlook. In this way we kept leap frogging our way up monitor Jacks progress and giving him encouragement and supplies as needed.

Jack was definitely pushing himself to his limit. I know he had some leg pain and other issues but he pushed through it and kept going. The Mt Lemmon climb does have a couple short downhill sections towards the top and that helped Jack recover a little before the final push to the top. 

The view from 8000 ft were incredible. 

 

There was one more climb towards the top that was 9% for about a mile and Jack made it up that and kept going. As he passed us I kept letting him know how may miles was left. At 2 miles we were close to the town of Summerhaven and at this point the climb was mostly over and it was downhill to the town itself. 

Summerhaven is a the town close to the top of the mountain (There is a ski resort and observatory 1000ft higher on a crappy road but the unofficial top for biking is Sumerhaven). The town consists of a few hotels some shops and a restaurant. It was really crowded and we struggled to find a parking spot but eventually did. Jack was totally shot but I have to say I was really impressed by his effort and glad he made it to the top as that was important to him.

After he changed and recovered the three of us had a good and well deserved lunch at the Sawmill restaurant. It was a good way to end the ride. It was close to 77 degrees up top at 1pm. This was unusually warm for this time of year as it is 20-30 degrees cooler up here compared to Tucson. But Tucson was close over 100 degrees at this point. Before the trip I thought I would need a jacket and arm warmers with me to do the climb and decent but didn't need them because of the warmer than usual weather. After lunch we each made our way back down the mountain and back to the Starr Pass resort where we were staying. 

Now that I have been to Mt Lemmon and biked up and drove up it I can see the reason people like this climb. This climb is easily in the reach of a biker in reasonable shape. I think if I had tried this in September or October when I would be in better shape I could have gone further. There is nothing impossible about the climb. I was very happy I made it up as far as I did and unlike Jack have no real desire to make it to the top but I'm really glad I did it (especially the down hill part.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Tucson Biking Part 1 Saguaro Park

The main reason for coming to Tucson was to check out the biking in the area. Tucson is know for being a very bike friendly city and a great place to ride. There are a lot of racers that train here in the winter months. Since we flew out here we had to rent bikes. I have rented bikes before so I thought I knew how it worked but Tucson does things differently. 

I rented the bike from Bike Tucson I did the rental online and everything seemed normal. I picked the road bike I wanted and gave them my inseam measurements and got a confirmation that I would get an email the day before my rental telling me how to pick up my bike from one of their three locations. I thought that meant that I would be going to a bike shop to pick up a bike but that is not what happened. 

The confirmation email I got from them had a phone number on it but it was text only. There was no way to call them which I thought was strange. So the night before I was suppose to pick up the bike I still didn't get an email about how to pickup a bike. I texted the number and eventually got a message back early on the day of the pickup about how to get the bike. Through texting I was instructed to upload my ID for verification then I got a couple of codes for a storage locker in Tucson to go pick up the bike.

When we got there and opened the locker we saw a set of about 70 road bikes of different sizes and types. I expected there to be one with my name on it but the way it works is you just pick a bike then set it up yourself. There is nobody there to help you. So Jack and I spent the good part of an hour setting up the bikes and testing them out. It wasn't hard to do the setup as I just had to put some peddles on and make some adjustments so the bike fit me. However I'm not sure what they expect people who don't works on bikes to do as there is no one to help you. In the end it worked out but it would have been nice to know the process before we got there so we could be prepared for it.  

We were in a couple of bike shops in our travels and asked about why they do bike rentals this way. The answer was that it cost a lot to maintain the inventory and maintain all the bike for the volume of rentals that are needed in Tucson. So to reduce overhead they just use storage lockers. This way they don't have to have the overhead of a store or have to pay someone to be there to give out the rentals. All the rental companies in Tucson do it this way and I couldn't actually find a bike shop that rents bikes so I guess the system works.

Once we got the bikes all set up we threw then in the car and headed to the north west part of Tucson for our first ride. Its was a 34 mile loop to Saguaro National Park. I had been to the park before,years ago, and had drove through it by car but was looking forward to see it by bike. We had a 20 mile ride on the local roads to get to the park. The riding was mostly on secondary and neighbor roads that almost always had a bike lane on them. It seems like every road in Tucson has a bike lane. 

The ride to the park was a gradual uphill in the 2% range and got a little steeper for about a mile going into the park. We stopped at the visitor center for a quick break before heading into the park. You have to pay to get into the park but we got talking to a biker in front of us who had a national pass and he got us in for free as his guests. Bikers are a tight group so we always help each other out even if we don't know them.

Once we got into the park we did the 7 mile loop through the Saguaro cactus forest. It is stark and spectacular all at the same time and pictures just don't do it justice. 

There are a lot of ups and downs and twisting roads in the park which make it fun to ride. There was one rude 1.5 mile 7% climb I wasn't expecting but it was a good test for the bikes as we would be doing a lot of climbing on day two. 

Once we left the park we had a 14 mile downhill ride back to the start. There was very little pedaling involved and it felt great especially since it was getting a little hot. 

So we got back to the start after a few wrong turns but we had now tested the bikes out and were ready for the next days ride.  

 

Tucson Dark Skies

Click Here for more Pictures 

About 6 months ago I decided to plan a vacation to Tucson for two main reason. Clear dark skies and biking. Tucson is one of the more popular biking destinations in the US and I have always wanted to do a trip out there so that was the main draw. The side benefit is that it is also a great place for astronomy. We were out here as part of a vacation in 2012 and spent some time at Kitt Peak looking at stars so I knew that it would be a good place to get some pictures of deep sky objects using my Dwarf 3 which I talked about in this post. 

That is why I chose to go to Tucson during the time of the new moon so that the light from the moon would not interfere with getting some good images of the night sky. There are three main types of deep objects that you can image. The first is an open cluster like the Pleiades shown below.

This is just a cluster of stars that look like that are grouped together. Sometimes they are physically close to each other other times they are separated by tens or hundreds of light years but just look like they are together because of the alignment as seen from earth.

The next type of object is a nebula which is a collection of dust and gas and is usually a place where stars are born like the horsehead nebula at that top of the post or the Orion below. 

 

Depending on the  makeup of the gas and the light from nearby stars they can take on many different interesting and colorful patterns.

Lastly there are galaxies which are billions and billions of stars that are gravitationally connected. Like our own Milky Way or the Andromeda galaxy. 

I rented a house at the top of a hill about 25 miles north east of Tucson and spend 2 nights imaging a bunch of deep sky objects. 

I would set up the Dwarf get it aligned to the target then take a nap for a couple of hours until the image was done then get up and select the next target. I didn't get a lot of quality sleep but I got some good images that would be hard to get from our cloudy light polluted skies in NJ. 

This is a picture of the Leo triple. 

This is a picture of three different galaxies at different orientations. Although this picture may not look as cool or as colorful as a nebula it is conceptually mind blowing. I was able to take a picture with some reasonable detail that shows multiple galaxies that could contain millions of habitual worlds.

The house I rented was  in Oro Valley was really off the beaten path as I had to travel up several sand/dirt roads and over cattle grates. It was in a beautiful location at the top of a hill overlooking the valley and Mt Lemmon. 

 

It was a very peaceful place and I spent the day time sitting on the porch and looking at the mountains. It was very relaxing and picturesque. I even got to see a few good sunsets. 

 

Before the trip I wasn't sure if spending two days by myself in the middle of nowhere would be a good idea but I'm glad I did it. I didn't get a lot of sleep but I did get some great photos of the night sky and had a very enjoyable and peaceful couple of days. Next it is on to Tucson to do some bike riding. 

Knowing When to Bail

I led a ride on Saturday that was suppose to do one of my normal routes from Allentown but the it didn't work out as planned. The plan was to go down through Columbus and past some longhorn cattle before a stop at Charleston Coffee which is one of our better rest stops. The weather was going to be in the high 40s low 50s so not bad temperature wise. The winds were suppose to be in the 15-20mph range so not great but we have ridden in this type of weather before. 

I ended up having a full ride and headed out down the planned route. On Iron Bridge there was a bridge out sign but we ignored it and headed toward the bridge. There is usually always a way to get through. Not this time as there was a bucket loader hammering some pilings in and a couple feet of dirt to get through so we turned around (This is one of the very few times this has happen to me.) 

To get around the closed bridge we had to go directly into the wind which was at least a steady  25mph with gusts well above 30mph. After a mile going straight into it a couple people bailed on the ride and headed back to the start(They were the smart ones). We were only about 5 miles into the ride at that point.

 Luckily the next 20 miles we did not have many head wind stretches but even dealing with the cross wind was tough has I had to lean into it to stay close to vertical. The last 5 miles of the planned route were going to be straight into this head wind which would have really been hard if not impossible so as I road along I thought about alternate routes. 

I have been riding in the area long enough to have a mental map in my head so decided to head north once we got to New Egypt since that is almost due south of Allentown where we started. I didn't know the exact route or road names but managed to get us to the New Egypt Wawa for a stop. 

Then it was through town and up Evergreen Rd which got us to Cream Ridge and from there most of the people knew the way back. We spread out a little as the wind was really wearing us down. 

The original ride was suppose to be 42 miles and we ended up with 39 so close. It felt a lot longer than that and we were slow because of the wind. We didn't do the ride expected but sometimes you have to give into the weather and do the best you can. 

Wet and Messy

 

The temperature has increased over the past couple of weeks but it still been hard to get a ride in. The two main problems have been the piles of snow and the misty rainy weather. 

Last week I led a ride from MCP. It was in the 40s but there was still piles of snow along the roadways even though the roads themselves were clear. I created a 34 mile route of almost all back and neighborhood roads so we won't be on any main roads that have been narrowed by the snow. We stop by the boathouse to take a look at the lake before heading through the back roads of West Windsor, Plainsboro, Cranbury and East Windsor before getting back to the park. 

It was a good ride but a wet and messy one because of all the grime on the road from the past snow storms and melting snow. It took me a while to clean my bike once I got home.

During the week there was some more snow and rain which made it hard to get a ride in. I did end up going out on Wednesday even through it was a bit foggy and misty. That fog seem to be around most of the week. The weather was in the 40s and 50s, this pass week, so a lot of the snow we got a couple of weeks ago has melted. 

This past Saturday I was planning on doing Laura's ride but work on a bathroom that was suppose to be done during the week got pushed to Saturday. I did manage to get a quick local ride in while the work was being done but it was another misty day with really wet roads. I probably gained a pound of dirt during the ride. Hopefully we will get some warmer and dryer weather soon because I'm spending way too much time cleaning my bike after rides.