Roadtrippin'

Once again an update without full Picasa image sets. Here in the outback I'm using my T-mobile Mifi connection, and I don't want to burn the limited data too quickly. First of all, a route-update:

Today was spent at the PEMA air museum, and the nearby 'scrapyard' in Tucson, Arizona. Roadtrip-wise, this is probably the farthest to the south that I'm gonna go. The reason I went to this place, was because it's the only place in the world that has this:

Or in Google maps: here

This is where the US's military stores it's excess airplanes. Either to be revamped, re-used, stripped for parts, or just plainly scrapped. Since it's an operational airbase you are not allowed on-site, but via the museum you can go on a bus tour. Sadly enough, my camera's batteries died halfway in, so I will have just a few pictures, and a lot of memories. An impression:

Hundreds of F16's (and F18's, F14's...)

Each drum houses an aircraft engine

The museum itself has tons of aircraft as well. Outside as well as inside, in 4 huge hangars. The Hangars were a little cramped, so I don't have very good pictures from the inside. A cool thing was that there is one complete hangar dedicated to the B17, the plane that flew a lot of bombing missions over Europe during WWII. This was also the first model plane I properly built, so I already knew a lot about it. One thing I didn't know is that it was also used to provide food in Holland during the 'Hongerwinter'. As the display below shows.

Well, all of this was from today, let's first head back to the day after I left Las Vegas. The first destination was nearby: Hoover dam. A great feat of engineering, and actually quite impressive in scale as well (ofcourse the Three Gorges Dam beats it). Walking the bridge above it was not for people suffering from Vertigo: that's my foot on the railing, and somewhere down there the square little thingies are cars.

After that I drove in the direction of Camp Verde, where I wanted to do a workshop in a blacksmithing school. Route 66 was along the way, so that's where I did my first true roadside camping.

Nearby Camp Verde is highway 89A, which is named one of the best scenic drives in the US. Jerome, an old West town which is now modernized and popular is also alongside it. Since there would have to be driving anyway, why not go the nice route huh?

An old building with all kind of 'lucky toilets' and probably 10 years worth of coinage thrown at them by tourists

My diet along the route has consisted of hamburgers the last 3 nights already, and there is one more left. That's the problem with buying fresh meat: you gotta eat it, and in the US, the smallest quantity you can buy (in a supermarket) is four. So on picasa you can see daily hamburger pictures, today it's just my usual evening setup with ingredients:

This was actually shot on a national forest camping range just outside of Camp Verde. I thought it would be nice to try this for a change, and with a little luck I might even get a shower. Instead there were noisy neighbors, a very stinky toilet, a $ 16,- fee, and on the plus side: a fire circle and water supply. Camping in the wild has my preference, I will only go to park camping sites if they have showers in the future. Using the mifi I did check my e-mail, and sadly enough the blacksmithing school would only 3-day courses... which are too expensive, and afterwards I would have a large piece of work which I would not be able to take with me. Too bad, I will probably visit the smith to see what he's up to though. On the local events page I did find a link to a 'renaissance fair', a crazy American thing which I would really like to see, so the plan for the day after was made!

So, what is a Renaissance festival? First of all it is a lot of people taking the opportunity to dress up and let down on their reserves: enjoy having a go at people, shout all kinds of gibberish, act a little and looking a little too sexy (corsettes and lots of cleavage everywhere, especially from fat Americans who actually shouldn't...). For the rest it is selling a lot of stuff (food, drinks, glassware, leatherware, metalware, jewelry, puppets, costumes, swords, magic wands, pet dragons, etc.). Another central factor was children's entertainment with lots of rides and activities (riding elephants or camels?!), and some stage performances. There were also a lot of musical performances (drums, harps, small piano's), some of these were actually very good and very enjoyable to listen to in the sun. Overall it was a fun experience, the general atmosphere was great, and also just sitting down and looking at all the interactions and crazy looking people was fun. I also met a few blacksmiths who shared some local info with me, probably I'll have a day of visiting smiths quite soon.

Ofcourse the food was also medieval: Turkey Leg mmmm

The day ended with a drive in the direction of Tucson. During this drive the landscape started to include more and more huge cactii (as depicted on the Arizona license plates as well). Camping besides these in the outback was high on the list. Finding the right spot took some planning, but I will elaborate on that in another post (sorry this one is a little hasty). 

Yup, standard food these days

the backyard :-D

Today I ended up in an even more beautiful place: in between the cactii at the side of a mountain overlooking Tucson. Tomorrow should include even better pictures.