Blustery Day

Good morning, my friends. It was the kind of spring day that included all kinds of weather...wind, rain, hail, sunshine...but mainly, the wind blew. We had on our agenda to take a walk in downtown Benson to see the Benson murals. The information I had about them indicated there are over 40 murals in Benson depicting local history and culture. Of course, we didn't see all of them. I took pictures of the ones we saw, but you can see more at the link I've given you. We were told the Benson Visitor Center was a good place to start. It was just about a mile away.

Benson owes its existence to the railroad because Southern Pacific Railroad built the town in 1888 when they put the tracks through. That heritage is reflected at the Benson Visitor Center, where a G-scale locomotive setup welcomes guests. Benson has been a railroad hub for 155 years, and the Visitor Center embraces that history. With a grant from the Union Pacific Railroad, 96 feet of track were hung inside the building. Being Sunday, of course, it was closed. It would be fun to come back and see it. You can see some pictures right here. The building itself is a replica of the original depot that was built over a century ago. Standing at the west end, the building looks like this:

Turning around 180° from that spot, there is a parking lot.

Walking to the east end of the building, it looks like this:

From across the street, I could see the whole building.

At the west end was a "little library."

It looks like a train car.

Looking back toward the parking lot, you can see the wall/fence zigzags the full length with murals and logos on the face of each east-facing wall.

I regret these pictures didn't turn out very well. I was dealing with shadows and reflections in all of them. I'm hoping you'll be able to enjoy them anyway. On the west side of the building was the "Train Series" of murals.

Starting with this one...

One assumes this is the original depot.

This next one shows a round house. I don't know if the round house still exists in Benson, but we were able to see one when we visited the B&O Train Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. You can read my post from that visit right here.

Backing up to the beginning, these are all the logos.

And oh look! Here comes the train now! I had a split second window to catch it as it sped by blowing its horn LOUDLY!!!! My shutter finger was a little too quick, but you can see it behind that tree. These are busy tracks. I'd say a train goes through at least every hour, morning and night. They blow their horn as they pass by. Happily, it didn't keep us awake at night.

Walking to the east side of the building, there was this one more train mural.

And then, the "Smelter Series." 

And if, like me, you don't know exactly what "smelting" is, Wikipedia to the rescue: "Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zinc. Smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gases or slag and leaving the metal behind."

Here are the murals honoring that part of the town's history.

At the end of that series of murals was this historic train car. It might be open for viewing on a different day, but I'm not sure about that.

From there, we crossed the street and went for a little walk. We could see some larger murals from where we were standing. This building caught my eye. Look at that year at the top: 1880. I would have loved to snoop around inside, but it too was closed on a Sunday. 

Peering through the window...

Walking on, we noticed this mural on the next block. There is so much detail, they almost appear three dimensional. Sorry about the shadows of power lines. I wondered if there would be a better time of day to visit, but I'm afraid shadows would fall somewhere no matter when we went.

The mural above was long and covered the whole side of a building. At the extreme right was the inset below.

Continuing on...

This next one includes the Harley-Davidson logo at the bottom. Since I'm not a Harley-Davidson afficionado, I went looking for a picture of the logo. It appears something similar to this mural is available as "metal wall art."

Here's another one that covered the entire wall of a building. It is life-sized, and that man on the right is a part of the mural. This one honors Benson's close proximity to Kartchner Caverns. We visited Kartchner Caverns State Park on a previous trip. It's a very nice campground, and the tour of the Caverns is well worth a visit. I'm afraid I don't have any pictures from that tour. The park is downright obsessive about keeping the cave pristine. Cameras and cell phones were not allowed inside, and the clothing and shoes we were wearing were carefully inspected for any contaminants we might inadvertently carry into the cave.

Continuing on...

This must be someone's beloved pet.

We passed by the Benson Museum...closed, of course. Nevertheless, I enjoyed these old photographs. Here, I was dealing with reflections on the glass. The pictures were framed behind class, and I was shooting through a window. They're still interesting. Check out the photo below of a horse-drawn school bus in 1915.

Here's a picture of the actual round house.

It's the one from the mural I posted above, but here it is again. 

And here's the train depot.

And that was the end of our walk around downtown. 

We were to meet up with Telescope Guy at 2:00 p.m. The time came and went with Telescope Guy a no-show. He's an elderly gentleman, and so we cut him some slack, thinking he'd just forgotten. As it turns out, he had to take someone to the hospital emergency room, and he came knocking on our door around 4:30 p.m., very apologetic. No problem. All's well that ends well. We were just happy to see him. If there had been a telescope "show," this is what we might have seen.

We have a 10-inch telescope at home. We haven't set it up for a long time, but we've always dreamed of creating a place for it in our field. It was fun to get a tour of their observatory and consider the possibilities for our own telescope. (My prediction is that this will never happen, but just talking about it is kind of fun.) 

So, here's there telescope. It's a 16-inch Meade. Coming through the door of the dome, this is the end with the eyepiece. That's it right in the middle.

Below is Jim, the Telescope Guy. He was a very nice gentleman. He and his wife live for free here at the park, and he puts on a telescope "show" four evenings per week, weather permitting. He's an astronomy buff, and told us he spends at least 2-4 hours per day studying up for his shows. It's a good gig for someone passionate about astronomy, as he is.

Below, you can see Mike listening in rapt attention. And this is the "lens" side of the telescope.

Here, I wanted you to see the two "spotting scopes" on the eyepiece end. (I'm putting these terms in quotations because I don't know if I'm using the right words.)

One is a conventional spotting scope, but above is a laser spotting scope.

Looking through it, you can see the red bullseye that helps the astronomer line up the telescope on very small objects. 

Looking up, you can see the seams where the dome opens to reveal the night sky.

Here's the dome from a different angle.

It was all very interesting a fun, and we thoroughly enjoyed talking with Jim. 

I expect we'll visit Benson again in the future, and I can highly recommend this area to my RVing and road-tripping friends. There is a lot to see here. The town itself is very interesting. Nearby one can visit Kartchner Caverns and Bisbee, Arizona. Bisbee is a really fun little town. Like Benson, the town itself is historically interesting, and you can take a tour of the Queen Copper Mine while you're there. You can read my blog post about Bisbee right here. Also nearby is Tombstone, Arizona. Tombstone was a little too touristy for us, but it's still worth a visit. You can read about our visit to Tombstone right here.

If those things don't interest you, you can visit today's destination in Willcox, Arizona. It's near Chiricahua National Monument. Since yesterday's post, I've looked into the national monument situation. The website notes the scenic drive is closed beyond the campground. So, of course, I wanted to see just exactly what that meant. The scenic drive is 8 miles long with the most stunning views at the end. If it's closed at the campground, then that means we can only visit the first mile. This concerned me, and so I called the park to inquire. Is it still worth a visit? The ranger said probably not. There's still a chance it could open by Tuesday (the day we plan to visit). But if not, I have an alternative destination in mind.

If we decide not to visit the national monument, there is a 3-mile hike out to Fort Bowie National Historic Site. According to the website, "Fort Bowie witnessed almost 25 years of conflict between the Chiricahua Apache and the US Army, and remains a tangible connection to the turbulent era of the late 1800s." The hike will take us to the visitor center and old fort ruins. So...okay. Sounds interesting and do-able. And if that doesn't pan out for some reason, Willcox is also noted for its wine industry. This area grows more than 75% of Arizona's wine grapes. It is also the source of the most highly-rated Arizona wines by Wine Spectator, with 45 wines rated 88-90 over the past 5 years. If we can't hike, we can always drown our sorrows in some good wine. Either way, all of this make another visit to this area desirable.

Okay, so that's all the sight-seeing I have for you today. While we sat hoping for the arrival of Jim, the Telescope Guy, I finished off Kitten #8.

Here are the eight blocks I have for this quilt so far.

And now I'll move along to the next block for Grandpa's Bridges. These are printed on Sticky Fabri-Solvy, and so I have it stuck to the block background now. I clipped out some labeling print that I didn't want there.

And now it's hooped up and ready for stitching. This is where I'll start.

It's our last morning in Benson, but we're only moving 37 miles down the road to Willcox. It's a little bit of time-juggling. We have to check out here at 11:00 a.m., but we can't check in at Willcox until 1:00 p.m. To kill time, we'll do our grocery shopping along the way, and that should put us into Willcox at about check-in time. We'll have two nights there before moving on to Las Cruces on Wednesday.

The kitties made sure we were awake to see the beginnings of this pretty sunrise this morning.

Making sure we're awake to see the sunrise is the kitties' most important job. With that, I'm off. I won all my word games this morning, and it's going to be a good day. I hope you have a good day too.