Mom and Dad's Tucson Trip - Days 1 thru 3

(Carrie) My parent's are spending a few sunny days with us in the Old Pueblo. They flew into Phoenix and attended an endowment session in the Mesa Temple. They picked up a rental car and came to Tucson Thursday night.

Friday the adventures began. Charles and dad played 18 holes of golf at the city golf course. It was alot of fun for both of them! Mom and I went shopping all morning.


Friday afternoon we all took a tour of the Postal History Foundation. We went there to pass some time before another scheduled tour. It was quite an interesting place! We saw an 1800s postal station (the old stations used to be built from a kit) and manual cancelling machines. We also saw stamps being sorted and a library about stamps.




Our next stop was to the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab under the football stadium at the University of Arizona. We got a fascinating look at the spin-casting processes involved in making giant telescope mirrors. The mirrors are made of borosilicate glass as big as 8.4-meters diameter! We saw 3 mirrors in various stages of the process. We were able to crawl into the top half of the drying oven (each mirror takes 3 months to dry) and also get a close-up view of a mirror getting a final polish. It takes about 3 years start-to-finish to complete each mirror.

A mirror getting the final polish.

The floor of the drying oven

The top of the drying oven

Standing up inside the drying oven


Saturday morning dad and I planned to run in the Marana Can Do 5k together to benefit the food bank.

As dad was warming up, he accidentally ran into a pole, giving himself a huge goose egg and very sore thigh muscle!

I ran the race by myself and was quite proud of my accomplishment. I ran more than 2/3 of the race, based on counting light poles. This is the 2nd race I've run in since I hurt my ankle and I haven't done much running the past few years. I don't have an official time (the race clock wasn't working), but Charles said I ran in under 40 minutes. It was a fun race for me to be in!


Saturday afternoon we tried to get onto Fort Huachuca Army base to see Charles' job site and the Army Intelligence Museum, but were denied access because dad left the rental car agreement back in Tucson. So, we got root beer floats at A&W to pass some time. We then went to Kartchner Caverns and took the "Big Room" tour. This is the second half of Kartchner Caverns that is only open from October thru April. It is closed the other half of the year because the cave is home to a bat maternity colony and the bats fly back to have their babies. This was a beautiful tour and we're glad we were able to see such amazing formations!