It took a while, but here it finally is: the result of almost five months of construction.
Album with lots of photos of the finished project
Albums with progress photos from different views:
Snow in Tucson
I couldn’t believe what I saw when I glanced out the window. Yup, it actually snowed, and the snow stayed on the ground.
It only lasted for an hour or so in our area of town, therefore no snowman or snowball fights.
Click here for more and larger photos.
Ginormous melons
My neighbor grows various fruits and vegetables in his garden. Last weekend he picked some water melons. Check out the size of this thing:
Want to know how heavy it was?
Just under 70 pounds / 31 Kilograms.
And it was delicious.
Another critter sighting in our backyard
This time we saw a baby turtle. It was tiny, about the size of my palm.
Crazy thunderstorm
We had a pretty intense thunderstorm over our house this afternoon. Lots of lightning and thunder that rattled the walls.
It’s amazing how much water is coming down during those storms. Here is a video taken from our backyard where you can see first see one of the scuppers dumping water from the roof and then the normally dry wash behind our house turning into a small river.
A tour of the ASARCO mission copper mine
We went on a tour of the ASARCO mission copper mine in Sahuarita, AZ. It is the second largest copper mine in Arizona. Two thirds of the copper in the U.S. comes from Arizona. Here are a handful of photos taken on the tour of this open pit mine and part of the ore processing facilities.
It was very interesting and we learned a lot of mind boggling details. Definitely worth checking out.
Click here for many more photos and some crazy numbers.
Even more critters
Again, not for the squeamish. You’ve been warned. If you prefer cute fuzzy critters that make you go ‘awww’, then click here now instead.
In case you didn’t know, scorpions are nocturnal arachnids that like to hide in dark cool places during the day and come out to hunt at night in the dark. Their exoskeleton has an interesting characteristic: When exposed to UV light, they fluoresce, looking like somebody dipped them in bright fluorescent paint. This makes them easy to find in the dark by simply sweeping with a handheld UV light.
We did this last night and went out searching our back yard in the dark with a couple of UV lights. We found several scorpions:
We also found an unexpected bonus…
Hoover Dam
On the way from Front Sight going back home I stopped to check out Hoover Dam and the new bridge.
Took a rifle class with some buddies
I took a four day practical rifle class with some friends at Front Sight in the Nevada desert.
As you can tell by the big grin on my face, it was a lot of fun. Exhausting, windy, dusty, and hot (over 100F the last two days), but a ton of fun.
Skat
I found a few other Germans here in town that like to play Skat (a popular German card game that can take years to learn and get somewhat decent at). Details about Skat on Wikipedia. We get together every few weeks to play, speak German, and eat gummi bears. Good times!
