9-20 The Journey Begins

After months of anticipation we finally hit the road.  We were up early this morning (4 am) to get Anna & Brian to the airport.  They flew to Chicago and will be road tripping around Lake Michigan.  Our vacations will be overlapping in Sheboygan during the first week of October.

So Tony & I officially hit the road by 6:15.  Traffic was light and we made good time even though there was quite a bit of road construction getting out of San Diego County. 

We grabbed breakfast on the road and made our traditional stop in Dateland for a date shake, then headed over to the  Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, the great house of the ancient Sonoran Desert people.  The grounds and museum are small and within an hour we were back on the road heading for Biosphere 2. 

For those of us old enough to remember back to 1991, eight volunteers were sealed in $200 million, privately funded Biosphere 2 to measure survivability in the closed environment.  According to our guide, socially, the experiments were considered failures.  But many scientists consider it a success because of the environmental knowledge gained during the missions.  The facility is now managed by the University of Arizona and used for Earth systems science research.

Tomorrow morning we're off to Alamogordo to spend the weekend with Tony and family. 

Don't forget to check out our pics!