Day 9 Wednesday 27th August (Tuscon to Williams - old route 66)

To date food has been a experience for us - Las Cruces tended to be burgers and burgers and just for a change - burgers.  Huge amount of fast food is available.  Following advice from Anita we discovered Cracker Barrel and finally got to choose foods we know - their meat loaf was great!.  In Tuscon, we ate at the resort and dinner was lovely (but pricey).  We shared an entree of battered - onion rings, carrots and prickly pear served with a very tasty dipping sauce.  Then for mains Dale had a seared sea bass which he loved and I had steak (as I was beginning to crave meat I could chew!), 2 beers and 2 wines and this came to $100 (including tip).   

 

The following morning , after breakfast, and following advice from the chatty security officer for the resort we took a short walk around the resort to take some rather nice photo’s of Pusch Ridge which sits behind the resort.

View behind Hilton look towards Pusch Ridge

Leaving the resort it was off to Biosphere 2 the rather well publicised facility used in an experiment in the early 1990's to see if humans could live in a fully isolated self contained sealed environment.  Biosphere 2 is located near Oracle and is called Biosphere 2 because Biosphere 1 is deemed to be earth.  The experiment  worked to some degree although there were some unexpected problems. Apart from the first team suffering from isolation and poor nutrition and falling oxygen levels.  The isolation much like the groups in Antarctica and other isolated environments experience.  The poor nutrition was due to lack of carbohydrates as they had to grow all their food.  An interesting un-expected problem and un-explained for some time, was the oxygen level dropping dramatically to the extent that in the end it had to be replenished. Part of this “loss” was due to the much larger number of microbes in the soil working overtime to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide, but a much larger problem was the concrete that was absorbing the oxygen and removing it from use by the other organisms (like people). Eventually the concrete was sealed to solve this problem.

Biosphere 2 in Oracle Arizona

Now the biosphere is not fully sealed, some smaller birds and reptiles are now able to seek refuge from their predators

Small test sea which is being converted from a tropical coral reef to represent the Sea of Cortez (California coast)

The Biosphere facility has since gone through a number of changing uses until its current owners, University of Arizona, converted it to a semi sealed experimental environment. This means that visitors (like us) can be catered for, and currently approximately 100,00 people visit each year. We visitors also help to fund the research with half the entry fee being used for this purpose. It was a very interesting place to visit and walk through the various environments - from tropical rain forest, marine environment to desert in just a few hundred feet.  Our guide was great and the tour took a little longer than it should have. 

Leaving Biosphere 2 we headed to Globe then through Snowflake to Winslow of Route 66 fame. Travelling on the high plains with the altitude around 5,000 feet and apart from some spectacular canyons, the scenery is almost billiard table flat in vast area’s.

We had a quick stop in Winslow to photograph the “Man on the Corner” and then to Williams for our overnight stop at the Red Garter Inn.

Then we headed for Wialliams just the other side of Flagstaff and following on old route 66.  We stayed at the Red Garter Inn - which in a previous life was the local brothel.........!

Red Garter Inn, Williams, Arizona