TWO PEAS AND THE POD: ANOTHER WALMART AND A DAY OF UNIQUE LOCATIONS (AZ)

Nothing too exciting to share about today's travel route.

First we traveled 22-miles north on AZ-85 before turning east on AZ-86 for another 143-miles of desert roads.

There were very few towns or much of anything else to see. At about the 100-mile mark of today's route we passed by the entrance of the Kitt Peak National Observatory.

With a name like that of course it's located on the peak of a mountain top high above all the light pollution of nearby Tucson, AZ.

It's finally open to the public once again after being closed since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thirty minutes after passing by the observatory we were having to negotiate our way through the traffic of South Tucson.

Not wanting to arrive too early for our overnight at Walmart we decided to have lunch at Eegee's. If you've never heard of it you've probably never been to southern Arizona.

Eegee's currently has 30 locations, all of them in the Phoenix and Tucson regions. They started in 1971 with just one mobile location, a food truck that served their famously delicious frozen lemonade. Now they have several flavors and a full menu of food offerings, such as their iconic crinkle cut french fries with bacon bits and homemade ranch dressing sprinkled on top.

I tried them both and it was refeshingly tasty. We'll be sure to stop in again when we return to this area.

There are many Walmarts in the Tuscon area, but we chose this location because there is a Costco less than a ½-mile away.

After shopping at Costco ($146) we arrived at Walmart and went shopping again ($166). We're stocking up with groceries because we're getting ready to go spend another two weeks down around the Mexican border where grocery store choices are somewhat limited.

It doesn't appear we'll be the only overnight RVers in the parking lot tonight.

SUNDAY - Since there wasn't too much to talk about during yesterday's travel day, I decided to include today's travels in the same post.

That's because today we should have several things to share along the way.

One thing's for sure, we had quite a few new neighbors arrive after we closed the curtains and went to bed last night. They too were awake early this morning and trying to warm up after last night's 40°F tempuratures.

No furnance required for this happy family of eight.
Just sit behind the windshield and things will be nice and toasty soon enough.

After filling up with nearly 30-gallons of relatively low priced gasoline ($2.94) we were soon headed south on the 63-mile long Interstate-19 that travels between Tuscon and Nogales, AZ.

Would you be able to correctly guess where we were given only this sign photo?

Interstate-19 is "unique" in the United States Interstate Highway System, not because it is a PRIMARY Interstate (1 or 2 digits) that actually doesn't cross a state line, the very definition of the word interstate, but because all of the distance signage along the highway is in metric measurements instead of miles. The speed limit signs were also in kilometers-per-hour at first, but have now been changed out with miles-per-hour signs.

The reason the signs are in metric measurements is due to bad timing. Interstate-19 was being constructed during the time when President Gerald Ford signed into law the Metric Conversion Act of 1975. Some of the "older readers" of this blog, myself included, will remember when gasoline pumps and gasoline price signs included both price per gallon and price per liter.

The United States is one of only three countries that "officially" use the Imperial System over the Metric System. The birthplace of the Imperial System, the United Kingdom, is stuck in the middle of both systems, so are some former Commonwealth Countries like Canada, India, South Africa and Australia.

We too here in the United States are not fully using the Imperial System. Most soda can be purchased in either 1, 2 or 3 liter bottles and water routinely comes in 400ml or ½-liter bottles. Have you ever heard of a 5K or 10K (kilometer) race, how about a motorcyle engine which is measured in cc's (cubic centimeters) or cigarettes and photo lenses are all mm's (millimeters).

So I guess we too fall into the catagory of being stuck in the middle, we just lean heavier towards the Imperial System with our inches, feet, yards and miles, or our pounds and ounces, or cups, pints, quarts and gallons. Let's not even start the conversation of Fahrenheit vs Celsius.

In the town of Green Valley, AZ we exited the Interstate and quickly found ourselves arriving at the Titan Missle Museum.

Since we completely missed out on the underground portion of the Minuteman Missle Site when we visited that park in South Dakota last August, I made sure to get reservations early this time. I didn't want to be like the people walking in here at 10:00AM this morning only to be told the rest of today's underground tours were already SOLD OUT.

TITAN MISSLE MUSEUM

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Another "unique" experience for us today.
This is the only place in the world where you can see a Titan Missle inside of it's silo.

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Our underground tour started with descending 55-stairs down to Mission Control.

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First we had to pass through several 6" thick blast doors.

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The entire underground system is stabilized with these huge springs.

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Here our tour guide explains the procedures required to launch a nuclear missle.

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First you're going to require two military personell and two keys.

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Then you'll need a six digit alpha-numeric code to insert into the equipment.

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The lower set of lights were for daily testing of the system.

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Between Mission Control and the missle silo is this long passageway.

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Our first glympse of a Titan Missle standing ready in it's silo.

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Just 3-minutes after launch is initiated the missle is away.

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There are many safequards and verifications in place to prevent an accidental launch.

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There are windows at the top of the silo we'll look into a little later.

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Aaah! Back above ground and fresh air.

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The view looking down into the silo through the windows.

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With our tour complete it's time to return to the Interstate and head further south towards our lunch destination.

The Longhorn Grill and Saloon is our third and final "unique" experience today. I mean where else can you walk through a 30' tall longhorn steer's nose cavity to be seated at a table and enjoy a delicious meal?