First Mission Coming to an End

Tonight we’re sitting here in The Enterprise having a Papa Murphy pepperoni pizza (my favorite), and watching NASCAR hoping the race will end well enough to gain some points in the fantasy game we’re in.  And although NASCAR can be fun to watch, it’s the kind of thing where you tend to do something else at the same time, so I thought I’d start putting down some thoughts about our last stops before home.  A couple of these were best saved for last as they were bucket list visits and did not disappoint! 

Fort Stockton

In case you didn’t know, Texas is pretty big.  Getting from the populated areas in central Texas to the west border is a two-day drive in an RV.  Fort Stockton is a good stopping place in the middle of nowhere, and I include it only to show a picture of our Jeep with it’s new matte paint job acquired there.  Apparently, they haven’t invented pavement in these parts, and dust prevails.  It’s a great place to pull in and spend the night without disconnecting the toad, but unfortunately the price to stay doesn’t include the washing necessary after you leave.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

I talked about Las Cruces when we stayed here on our way east, but thanks to some friend’s recommendation, we visited a restaurant in Mesilla (Mess … See-Ya) just south of Las Cruces that’s definitely worth a mention.  The Double Eagle is famous not only for it’s food, but also the GHOSTS!

Built in the late 1800s by a wealthy family as their home, an all too familiar love story / tragedy occurred within those walls.  The wealthy son falls in love with a ‘common’ girl, the mother doesn’t approve, but after forbidding the relationship, mom finds the teens together in the bedroom.  Enraged, mom stabs the girl with her sewing shears.  Shielding his love, the son steps in front of the shears before the second blow, and is stabbed as well.  The girl dies right away, the son a few days later.  The mansion was eventually converted to a restaurant, but not before the ghosts of the lovers began returning to the room where the murders occurred.  Whether true or not, it’s famous enough to make sure you better have reservations at this place or you’re not getting in!  The food is worth the price of admission though and what a great atmosphere!  

Tombstone, Arizona

Speaking of old tales, Tami and I are fans of the old west, and two figures in particular we’ve always been fond of are Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday.  If you haven’t seen the movies, ‘Wyatt Earp’ with Kevin Costner and Dennis Quade, and ‘Tombstone’ with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer provide some of the history, each in their own way.  The most well known part of this story is the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (which was the gunfight on East Fremont before Hollywood).  It was a very short gunfight but somehow went down in history as one of the most famous, maybe because the good guys got all the bad guys.  Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp, along with Doc Holiday (a former dentist and well traveled gambler with tuberculosis) set out to disarm some of The Cowboys, a horse thief gang causing mischief in Tombstone.  But the disarming turned into shooting and whereas the Earp Brothers (except Wyatt) and Doc all had minor wounds, the Cowboys involved were all killed.  The remaining Cowboys retaliated later and killed Wyatt’s brother, Morgan, causing Wyatt to go on a rampage famously known as the Vendetta Ride.  

What’s great about visiting Tombstone is that all of the famous places from the story still exist!  Some are not the same as they were, but most are.  The main road through the old town is still dirt and you can feel the history when waking down the street.  Yes, it’s touristy as one would expect, but it’s done well and preserved to the point that visiting the saloons and historic locations … watching the re-enactment of the O.K. Corral fight, are fulfilling knowing that you’re actually walking in the tracks of those famous characters from history.  As an added bonus, attractions, including food, are relatively inexpensive, especially compared with Fredericksburg Texas where we had just been.

Biosphere 2

I remember seeing this on the news back when I was a youngster in my early twenties and being fascinated by the story.  I had completely forgotten about it but finding out it was only an hour from our park in Tucson, it was a visit we couldn’t pass up.  After visiting and continuing to read more about the place, I have so much to say I don’t know where to begin.  But I’ll try to keep it short (or not) and interesting – even if you’re not scientifically inclined like me.  

The Basics:

Biosphere 1 is the Earth, a closed system with limited resources.  Human inhabitants have historically ignored this fact but are just starting to realize it might be important. (Including me!)

Biosphere 2, a much smaller closed system with Earth ‘biomes’ and very limited resources causing all natural systems to be highly accelerated. This allows testing and forecasting the results of the same processes in Biosphere 1.  Human inhabitants were keenly aware of their environment and continuously worked on maintaining it.

Biosphere 2 consists of several buildings that can be completely sealed from earth’s atmosphere (but aren’t anymore), housing diverse biomes, smaller versions of those on earth.  A desert, an ocean, savanna, thorn scrub, rain forest, marsh, river and floodplain, along with a separate agricultural area including animal pens, and of course human living quarters were all engineered to exist in a sealed structure. Within these biomes are edge zones that allow one biome to flow into the next.

The History:

The original experiment was designed to test complete human self sufficiency in a sealed environment for future space travel, and living on other planets.  In 1991, 8 crew members entered Biosphere 2 and were sealed in for a two year period during which they studied the impacts of life on natural systems, and attempted to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the environment.  Another sealed mission was launched in 1994.  

The Controversy and Outcome

Biosphere 2 was not completely sealed the whole time for various reasons, the main one being that oxygen levels dropped further than expected, and the public wasn’t informed.  Also there was the human factor:  After being locked together for so long, infighting between the crew started to occur as opinions differed on how to deal with emerging problems.  Depending on how you measure, it was a huge success or huge failure.  Our sensationalist media painted the experiment as a complete failure, but I prefer to draw my own conclusions. (As with most ‘news’).  Most experiments are not without issue.  For instance, how many SpaceX rockets have crashed?  Do we consider that a failure or do we keep trying?  What we learned, and continue to learn in this lab are invaluable lessons not only for things like our eventual Mars mission, but more importantly, what we can do to sustain life on our own planet.

Present Day:

After changing ownership several times, Biosphere 2 is now the world’s largest Earth Sciences laboratory owned and operated by the University of Arizona.  Research in this facility continues to study our impact on the environment and solving problems of sustainability and conservation.  Things we take for granted but don’t actually know much about, such as how ground water permeates various soil types, how long it lasts, and how chemicals are absorbed (or not) are currently being studied in the agricultural section.

The Cool Factor 

For me, as a person who has created and maintained semi-closed aquatic systems, this place is a toy box on a massive scale.  In building a coral reef of your own, diverse sections are necessary to make a mini-ocean that supports life and encourages growth of all inhabitants.  My system simulated day and night, moonlight, clouds and thunderstorms, and had a day on the opposite side of the ocean (sump below the tank) at night to keep pH steady.  It had a mangrove cove and macro algae chambers below the main tank to draw nutrients from the water, hundreds of snails, crabs and other invertebrates to maintain unwanted algae and detritus from fish.  Waves were created by various pumps and circulation systems to create the natural foam on our beaches that washes our sea water.  Probes monitored water quality and readings were recorded on the computer so trends over time could be identified if something was going wrong, or peace of mind that it was going right.  It was only semi-closed as I introduced food, water after evaporation, and replaced chemicals depleted by coral and fish.

On a much larger scale, with humans instead of marine life, Biosphere 2 attempted the same thing in the closed missions.  An environment that would keep humans in a sealed biosphere took years to develop, and engineering such a massive living environment took engineers from around the world coming together to solve the problems of creating a structure in which atmosphere, water, food and waste could be continuously recycled – at very high rates.

One major problem to solve was the expansion and contraction of air inside the structure due to changes in heat.  To keep the glass from exploding, two buildings were created (now called the lungs), with a rubber membrane inside that can expand like a balloon.  Tunnels underground channel the air from the main structure into the lungs and as the air heats, the lungs expand, and vice versa. 

I could go on and on about this place, and it’s hard for me to contain my excitement just talking about it 🤓, but there are books that describe it better than I can.  A great book I’m reading now, “Pushing our Limits, Insights from Biosphere 2”, is by one of the first crew members, Mark Nelson.  He writes about the problems they faced in engineering as well as living there, and how they relate to our current environmental challenges.  What they did to fix them in Biosphere 2, and what we’re not doing to fix them in Biosphere 1 are real eye-openers for someone like me who really hasn’t thought about it a lot.  Definitely worth a read if you’re into that kind of thing.  (Now I need to start the diesel engine and run the generator … but awareness is the first step to action!)

OK – enough science stuff.  If you’re still following, here are a couple more light weight things to mention.

Canyon Lake / Tortilla Flat

While waiting for the last renters to vacate the house, we stayed in Apache Junction, AZ, about an hour Southeast of Fountain Hills.  Heading Northeast out of Apache Junction is the Apache Trail road, a ridiculously scenic drive displaying some of the best views of the Sonoran Desert we’ve seen yet.  This time of year there is actually a lot of greenery, as well as the hillsides of massive saguaro cactus that are the unmistakable hallmark of this region.  The road passes another old ghost town tourist attraction (Goldfield Mine Ghost Town) where we stopped for a thirst quencher at the Mammoth Saloon. 

A little further up the road is Lost Dutchman state park.  (I wish those dutchman would have bought a map). Somewhere around here, as the legend goes, there is a gold mine and or a large stash of gold. People spend time hiking in the park hoping they’ll be the one who finds the lost Dutchman and his gold!

As the road winds into the Superstition Mountains, gorgeous panoramic views open up revealing the surrounding peaks and valleys.  Canyon Lake is the next stop on the Apache Trail.  Just as it sounds, the lake is surrounded by high cliffs and is really just a wide spot in the Salt River which is the drinking water source for Fountain Hills.  Go a little further and you finally end up at Tortilla Flat, another old mining town that has been preserved for a driving destination.  Similar to Winthrop in Washington, it’s a biker’s town with live music, another old saloon, and of course ice cream and a few shops.  The road used to go much further but fires followed by heavy rains caused one side of a mountain to slough off and completely cover the road. It hasn’t been rebuilt since.

Cheesecake!

Lastly, as there are not a lot of places to eat near Apache Junction, we wound up at a Cheesecake Factory (never been to one before).  Normally we avoid the big chain restaurants, but I have to say we really enjoyed our meal here, and especially the dessert!  Trying to quench my thirst for chocolate, I partook of the Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake, and Tami sampled a slice of the Adams Peanut Butter Cheesecake: both, of course, delicious!

At our last stop we paid to have the dirt of several states washed from the outer shell of the Enterprise, and a new coat of wax applied to keep her looking shiny and new.  And as of writing this, tomorrow, with bittersweet feelings, we head home for a while. I will sum up the journey in a couple weeks. For now though, I’ll just say that we’re excited to expand our living quarters, but this trip may have changed our perspective on that.  We’ll let you know after we’ve settled in!

Thank you all for riding along!

Greg & Tami  

Some other pictures that didn’t fit the narrative: