See you next year, Tucson

We've been at Tucson's Davis Monthan Air Force Base since January 5. We like Tucson -- a lot -- but it's time to move, so today we're headed north. Before we go we wanted to post pics of a few more things we've done lately:

 Visited the Tucson Museum of Art

The spring exhibit we saw included "The Figure Examined," (self explanatory) "The WPA Connection," (creations of artists who were part of the Works Progress Administration's depression-era public art project); "La Vida Fantastica,"(folk art); and "Shadow Play," (works that highlight light and shadow).  We also visited Tucson's very interesting Desert Art Museum, but photos of most of the exhibits were prohibited.

Ate lunch at Davis Mothan's Food Trucks

Twice a month food trucks offer lunch at the Air Force Base.  We ate there last week and nine trucks offered Indian cuisine, burgers, pizza, barbecue, Mexican, Italian, Canadian (poutine, anyone?) and apparently two more I can't remember but I'm sure were great.  I had chicken tandoori; Jim had a turkey avocado sandwich on Texas toast.  I noticed the sign in the second photo above and asked the server about it.  He said because the trucks were from off base they all had to post a buyer-beware-type sign.  The food was good; no food poisoning to be had.

Enjoyed the spring flowers

Tucson had a record-breaking-almost-an-inch of rain January 30 and in the first 45 days of 2015 had about 2.5 inches.  That last number is about an inch more than normal and a lot more than the .01 inch Tucson had last year in the same time frame, per a local TV station. That small amount of rain makes the desert bloom. Above are few plants blooming right now here at Davis Monthan. The yellow spiky one on the right is an aloe vera flower-- the same aloe vera used in sun burn lotions.  

Ocotillo -- which before it blooms looks like a pile of spiny sticks -- are in heavy flower all over town.  Some ocotillo are thick and full like the one above, others are thin and wavy, others are pretty bare except for a few red flowers.  Supposedly they can bloom several times a year if they get enough rain.  Without much rain, the plants usually green up and bloom in the spring.  Locals have long made fences from the sticks, which sometimes bloom and turn into living barriers.

Made return trips to a few brew pubs.

From top to bottom:  Jim at Sentinel Brewing; dark beer big sampler at Dragoon Brewing; Jim at the the bottle store of a pub called 1702 -- we'd only been there once before about six weeks ago and the server remembered Jim. Not sure if that's good or bad.