<– Day 5- Sunday March 13th: Camels & Cones | Beginning | Day 7 – Tuesday March 15th: Rollin’ Like Bill Gates –>

(See yesterday’s post here) — Today we traveled from Yuma to Tucson, but not before I went to prison. It all started innocently enough. I went to take my shower in the morning. When I got out, I caught my wife surfing a jeep site other than eWillys!!! I thought about divorce, but it seemed like she’d get off easy. After extensive thought, I decided to tie her to some train tracks and let the train run over her. That’s reasonable, right?

The problem was, the darn train came to a stop a few feet from her. Who’d have thought that would happen? Not wanting to get caught, I tried to untie her, but that’s when the police showed up. It turns out that justice is metered out quickly at Yuma. The next thing I knew, I was hauled off to jail. First they photographed me:

Then, they dumped me in an old prison cell at the Yuma Territory Prison.

What a day! After a minute in the jail cell, I concluded I wasn’t ready to serve my full sentence, so I sought a pardon from my wife. Thankfully, the time apart had softened her hard heart from the brutal, near-death experience at the wheels of the train. We forgave and forgot, then we toured the Yuma Territorial Prison Historic State Park. It was a pretty interesting place.

Inside cell. five or six men to a cell. This shows two abutting cells.

Series of cells. The area was formerly covered by a second story.

Another wing of cells.

After we left the prison, we went downtown and took some photos.

We enjoyed the small town feel of the place. Yuma turned out to be pleasant town, not the dry dusty western town I’d imagined it would be (a memory likely the result of western movies).

Today we drove from Yuma, AZ, to Tucson, AZ.

From Yuma, we drove east on I-8. We learned along the way that there are three ‘crops’ grown in southern Arizona: cows, solar panels, and greens of some kind. The greens we identified as vegetable; the panel farms were enormous, but inedible; and the three corporate cow farms seemed the biggest of all, crazy big and in the middle of the desert no less.

After an hour or so on I-8 we exited at Gila Bend. There we found a few interesting places to photograph.

Next, we headed south for the town of Ajo. We learned speed limits don’t apply on this remote highway. We thought it best to keep up with the traffic (I won’t mentioned the excessive speeds). Eventually, we arrived in the town of Ajo. As we entered it we encountered this bizarre mural.

The Night of the Lupus was a movie about killer rabbits.

The farther into town we drove, the more humble the houses appeared …. more accurately shacks in some cases. Then, suddenly, a beautiful town square emerged in the middle of town:

A short distance from the town square is the closed Ajo Copper mine, along with a spot that overlooks part of the mine. It didn’t appear as big as the Utah’s Bingham Mine nor as extensive as the American Eagle Mine we photographed in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Still, it was a good sized hole!

On our way out of town, we spotted this interesting mural.

The rest of the drive was mostly mundane desert, interrupted occasionally by wonderful forests of Suarho cacti.

Tonight we are staying in Tucson. Tomorrow we get to have a special ASARCO mine tour. Then, Ann would like to visit down town Tucson and explore it a bit. We’ll stay again in Tucson tomorrow night (or somewhere nearby). We don’t have plans for Wednesday just yet.

<– Day 5- Sunday March 13th: Camels & Cones | Beginning | Day 7 – Tuesday March 15th: Rollin’ Like Bill Gates –>