Scenic and Scary

  We've had a very interesting couple of days since our last episode. Wednesday was laid back as we'd been doing a lot and just wanted a day to chill. Thursday, it was back to work! As I mentioned earlier, we planned to kayak on Watson Lake so off we went so we could get on the lake before the sun got too high.

  Like all our time here in Arizona, the weather was perfect; clear blue sky and temps in the high 20's. If I haven't said so before, the sun here is crazy hot. The air temperature might be very comfortable but, when you're in the sun, it seems so much hotter. Because of that we made sure we were off the water by 11 am so we wouldn't fry.

  Watson is an artificial lake which submerged an area of hoodoos, leaving the weird rock formations sticking out of the water. It's an incredibly beautiful spot and, being able to paddle right up to the rocks makes for an interesting trip:

  After our two hours on the water we headed into Prescott for Mexican Chocolate Lattes. Good decision 😋. It's something we'll partake of again before we leave in ten days. We topped the day off getting an oil change... we know how to have fun.

  Yesterday was another exploring day but, this time, I suggested we go further afield. Atlas Obscura turned up some interesting spots around Tucson, which is a 3 1/2 hour drive from here, so it became a full-day excursion to an area of Arizona we'd never seen before. The first thing we encountered was the only stretch of metric highway, Interstate 19, in the entire country:

  Our first stop was the Titan Missile Museum midway between Tucson and the Mexican border. Well, it's not really a museum -- it's a decommissioned Titan II missile silo and you take a guided tour down into it. What a scary place! Our guide was stationed there in the 1970's and told us everything about living and working there while knowing at any moment he might be ordered to kill millions of people.

  This silo, and eighteen others like it around Tucson, were constructed after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Titan II missiles carried 9 megaton warheads and were designed using a new aerozine fuel that allowed the rocket to be stored in the silo fully fueled and able to be launched within three minutes of receiving the order. This was a major improvement over the Titan I which, using liquid oxygen, could only be fueled immediately before launch so had to be stored above ground. Since Soviet missiles could reach the U.S. in thirty minutes, the new development provided a serious retaliatory threat which established MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and significantly reduced the chance that the USSR could carry out a pre-emptive attack.

  There is a missile on display in the silo with a dummy warhead, of course. This silo is one of the ones agreed upon during the SALT talks in the 1990's that would be open to Russian inspection at all times.

This picture is taken through the glass opening in the silo doors, designed to allow Russian spy satellites to view the missile from above to ensure it has not been re-armed:

  During the tour we were led into the control room where we were given a demonstration of exactly how a launch order would be carried out.

 

The safe where the launch orders were kept. There were two copies to be decoded by the two on-duty officers independently to ensure the message was decoded accurately.

  The underground spaces where crew were stationed were isolated from the surrounding 4-foot thick walls by a series of springs and shock absorbers to help them withstand the shock of a nearby airstrike or a launch from the silo. Of course, if there was an actual Soviet missile strike within a mile the site would have been obliterated, a possibility they all lived with throughout their time stationed there.

Walking from the control room to the silo... note the shock absorbers every six feet along both walls:

  Our guide also explained how the advanced (for the time) guidance system functioned and why it was so much more advanced that the Russians', which didn't become apparent until after the USSR fell. Finally, in a conversation with Penny and I he revealed he had been on duty in 1977 when a new radar detection system had mistakenly announced a launch of twelve Soviet missiles. President Jimmy Carter was airborne in his flying command post and averted WW III by deducing the USSR wouldn't have launched only twelve of their thousands of nuclear weapons and decided not to launch a retaliatory strike. Very scary stuff.

  Back above ground, the next stop on our adventure was to visit the border town of Nogales. Why? Back in 2018, Donald Trump's wall-building effort was in full swing and Nogales was in the news as he took a sleepy, peaceful border town whose residents were close with their Mexican counterparts and severed it with a 30 foot tall monstrosity, subsequently covered in razor wire:

  The town and its residents have never recovered. It's an example of how the shady politics of Trump and his followers have ruined some innocent peoples' lives and was worth seeing up close. While we were taking this picture there was activity all around with Border Patrol vehicles speeding up and down the surrounding streets... a bit like a war zone.

  Finally, because we were in the neighbourhood, we headed to Tombstone, the site of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral.

  Yeah, it's a giant tourist trap but we did spend some time in the Boot Hill Cemetery where we saw the graves of the gunfight's losers and some other unfortunates:

  That capped off a very long and hugely impactful day for both of us. Of course, on the return trip Atlas Obscura did direct us to an oddity we just had to see. Between Phoenix and Tucson lies the Coronado Spy Satellite Calibration Site. Here's what it looks like from the sky:

... and here's what the middle of it looks like from the ground... in the dark:

  Now that we've seen most of what Arizona has to offer we'll relax a bit for the next few days as the temperatures start to climb into the mid-30's. We'll likely head up to Sedona in the next week, do some hiking there, play some golf, etc. Because of it's high altitude it will be a refreshing spot to get out of the increasing heat. Until then, cheers!