Las Vegas is, well, Las Vegas. Always has been for years and probably always will be. Huge casinos, the fat and gross of America eating for all they are worth, a city of Chinese and Japanese tourists and of course us.
We are staying in The Signature at the MGM Grand which is a complex of three massive tower blocks up to 35 stories tall but with one unusual feature for this city. No slots or gambling of any kind on the property. Players can walk through to the MGM Grand if they want to but nothing here otherwise than a very nice hotel.
Tomorrow morning we start the long shlep home but one final road trip story before we go.
Yesterday, both desperate and grateful for a meat meal, we drove over to the Haifa Restaurant on E.Twain at lunchtime. Besides one other couple we were the only people in the place. Our server, an elderly black guy, Favio, wearing a neat soft cap started asking us questions about dollar/sterling exchange rates. He is a collector and dealer of jazz LPs and 78s and he does a lot of business in the UK because no one in the US wants to buy old 78s. Our lunch came - matzo ball soup and meat and chips for Mrs Superpharm, Yemenite soup and schwarma in pita for me; ecstasy after nearly three weeks away from a proper kosher meal - the other couple, a young couple paid their bill and sat waiting for a taxi to take them back to the Strip. We finished our meal, paid and got ready to leave, the young couple were still sitting and waiting for a cab. We asked them where they were staying and would they like a lift. They gratefully said yes and we started talking to them. A Brazilian couple from Sao Paulo on honeymoon, they had been married a few days ago. The husband is from a Syrian family and is a trader in stationery in his father's business. Even though they are Sephardi the rav of their shul is Lubavitch which probably isn't that strange anyway. Vegas was their first stop on an very enviable journey. From Nevada they were flying to Los Angeles for a short stay then on to Tahiti before going on to Bora Bora before finally staying in Hawaii before flying back to Brazil. A nice couple, she just 20 he 28, ww were delighted to offer them a lift, to wish them mazel tov and to deliver them safely to the front of the Bellagio.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Williams's Grand Motel
To get the full Route 66 experience we decided that we had to spend a couple of nights in a motel actually on Route 66. But not an average, run of the mill motel chain motel, rather something more evocative of Route 66 as it was before the coming of the Interstate. That is why we checked into The Grand Motel in Williams Arizona and met the owner Bob.
The Grand Motel was built as a motor court in 1937 before the term motel was invented in the 1950s and because of the lack of interest of previous owners the motel still has many of the 1930s features such as tiled bathrooms, period furniture and generally an air of not so genteel decay. Bob bought the motel four years ago from its previous owners, a couple in their 70s, who decided that they wanted to go into the motel business after their retirement. They really bought the business for its real estate potential and did hardly anything to the property. In fact in the winter they closed the place down and moved into another motel they owned in the area. After a career in the US military, a flier for Air America in S.E.Asia, a pilot for Grand Canyon Airlines and a number of other jobs later, Bob and his wife bought the Grand Motel both as a business and also for its real estate potential.
Through both a lack of finance and Bob's obvious wish to keep the quirky nature of the motel, the 1930s atmosphere has been retained. In fact he has done very little to the motel but what it lacks in modern day creature comforts is made up for by Bob's genial 'my host' attitude. How many hotels or motels can you be told at check-in where NOT to eat in a town.
"Don't eat in the restaurant next to the tourist centre in the railway station. I've had 9 guests who have eaten there complain of stomach upsets and no one working on the railway will eat there. Try the Red Raven its the best place in town. The chef does some special touches like putting herbs in the butter for the bread on the table."
Bob serves breakfast on the motel patio every morning and this is a great way for his guests to meet and talk to each other. Bob sits down with everyone, asks questions and generally acts as the perfect host.
So, his coffee isn't great and the foam plates and cups blow around a lot in the wind but how often can you say that you have sat outside on a sunny morning, eating breakfast while Route 66 crawls slowly past.
At night we sat on the patio with Bob and talked as he told us a little about his life running the motel. Four people walked into the court.
"Can I help you?" Bob called out.
They were looking for rooms for the next night; we heard the sound of Hebrew as they talked between themselves; they looked at us and started speaking to us in Hebrew. Why? They had seen that we were both wearing Crocs and they assumed that we were therefore Israeli. They were a couple from Netanya with their son who is studying animation at university in San ?Francisc and his wife.
Even at after 11 at night people were driving up looking for a room. One night a car came into the court, Bob went over to greet them, a deal was done, Bob hung a 'No Vacancy' sign outside the motel office then went to switch off the 'Vacancy' sign on his illuminated street sign.
"Last room gone?" I said to Bob.
"Yeah, full house. Someone who had made a reservation came in earlier, looked at the room and said his wife wouldn't like it. I charged him $20 cancellation then that guy just drove up so I gave him a good deal on the room so he took it. I have to get the guy in 11 out tomorrow morning at 5. He came in asking for a long-term rental which I don't like, he's trashing the room and he's smoking in it too. Thinks I won't see the butts all over it. He's out in the morning."
Bob told us a little about Williams. A now sleepy little place it had once been a busy town because of the timber business in the area and because of the railway that runs through it. One place, the Red Garter, used to be a saloon and brothel with 9 'cribs' upstairs as well as a often frequented outhouse. It is now a small, four bedroom hotel and coffee shop that gave up 'trade' as late as 1948. The present owners say that one of the girls from the 'good old days' still lives in the town though she has long retired.
Williams held out against the interstate for as long as it could but finally had to acquiesce to the inevitable march of progress however the town managed to negotiate a concession for itself of having three junctions put onto I-40 to give people access to the town. Imagine, a town of a thousand or so inhabitants, a short main street and three exits to the Interstate. When the day came to open the intersections everyone in town started using them and it is rumoured that there was hardly any traffic on Main Street for nearly three weeks.
So, it was good bye to Bob, his bonhomie and his period motel with flaking paint and sagging chairs, to the Travelling Blues Man in room 4 who went out at night dressed all in black like a Sergio Leone cowboy and the lady who rents room 1 as a base for her elk and buffalo jerky business. An interesting place to stay if ever you are in Williams, Arizona.
The Grand Motel was built as a motor court in 1937 before the term motel was invented in the 1950s and because of the lack of interest of previous owners the motel still has many of the 1930s features such as tiled bathrooms, period furniture and generally an air of not so genteel decay. Bob bought the motel four years ago from its previous owners, a couple in their 70s, who decided that they wanted to go into the motel business after their retirement. They really bought the business for its real estate potential and did hardly anything to the property. In fact in the winter they closed the place down and moved into another motel they owned in the area. After a career in the US military, a flier for Air America in S.E.Asia, a pilot for Grand Canyon Airlines and a number of other jobs later, Bob and his wife bought the Grand Motel both as a business and also for its real estate potential.
Through both a lack of finance and Bob's obvious wish to keep the quirky nature of the motel, the 1930s atmosphere has been retained. In fact he has done very little to the motel but what it lacks in modern day creature comforts is made up for by Bob's genial 'my host' attitude. How many hotels or motels can you be told at check-in where NOT to eat in a town.
"Don't eat in the restaurant next to the tourist centre in the railway station. I've had 9 guests who have eaten there complain of stomach upsets and no one working on the railway will eat there. Try the Red Raven its the best place in town. The chef does some special touches like putting herbs in the butter for the bread on the table."
Bob serves breakfast on the motel patio every morning and this is a great way for his guests to meet and talk to each other. Bob sits down with everyone, asks questions and generally acts as the perfect host.
So, his coffee isn't great and the foam plates and cups blow around a lot in the wind but how often can you say that you have sat outside on a sunny morning, eating breakfast while Route 66 crawls slowly past.At night we sat on the patio with Bob and talked as he told us a little about his life running the motel. Four people walked into the court.
"Can I help you?" Bob called out.
They were looking for rooms for the next night; we heard the sound of Hebrew as they talked between themselves; they looked at us and started speaking to us in Hebrew. Why? They had seen that we were both wearing Crocs and they assumed that we were therefore Israeli. They were a couple from Netanya with their son who is studying animation at university in San ?Francisc and his wife.
Even at after 11 at night people were driving up looking for a room. One night a car came into the court, Bob went over to greet them, a deal was done, Bob hung a 'No Vacancy' sign outside the motel office then went to switch off the 'Vacancy' sign on his illuminated street sign.
"Last room gone?" I said to Bob.
"Yeah, full house. Someone who had made a reservation came in earlier, looked at the room and said his wife wouldn't like it. I charged him $20 cancellation then that guy just drove up so I gave him a good deal on the room so he took it. I have to get the guy in 11 out tomorrow morning at 5. He came in asking for a long-term rental which I don't like, he's trashing the room and he's smoking in it too. Thinks I won't see the butts all over it. He's out in the morning."
Bob told us a little about Williams. A now sleepy little place it had once been a busy town because of the timber business in the area and because of the railway that runs through it. One place, the Red Garter, used to be a saloon and brothel with 9 'cribs' upstairs as well as a often frequented outhouse. It is now a small, four bedroom hotel and coffee shop that gave up 'trade' as late as 1948. The present owners say that one of the girls from the 'good old days' still lives in the town though she has long retired.
Williams held out against the interstate for as long as it could but finally had to acquiesce to the inevitable march of progress however the town managed to negotiate a concession for itself of having three junctions put onto I-40 to give people access to the town. Imagine, a town of a thousand or so inhabitants, a short main street and three exits to the Interstate. When the day came to open the intersections everyone in town started using them and it is rumoured that there was hardly any traffic on Main Street for nearly three weeks.
So, it was good bye to Bob, his bonhomie and his period motel with flaking paint and sagging chairs, to the Travelling Blues Man in room 4 who went out at night dressed all in black like a Sergio Leone cowboy and the lady who rents room 1 as a base for her elk and buffalo jerky business. An interesting place to stay if ever you are in Williams, Arizona.
Route 66
What about Route 66? Well here it is.
This evocative two lane road linking Chicago with Los Angeles and passing through small towns and large cities was the only practical route linking the east coast and the mid-west with California and all places in between. Diners, gas stations, motor courts and tourist traps opened in some of the most isolated areas of America through the 30s and 40s until the newly built interstate highway system finally replaced it in the 1980s. The Department of Transportation finally rang the death knell for Route 66 when overnight on one night in 1984, all the Route 66 signs were taken down right along the route and only signs to the interstate system remained. Towns decayed and died and it is only in the last five or ten years that they have come back to life of sorts through the efforts of these towns to resurrect some of the memories of an America long gone that Route 66 now recalls.
To complicate things Route 66 took different directions at different times in the 30s and 40s as cities such as Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico, for instance, expanded. However with the use of a good guide book and the 'Historic Route 66' road signs throughout Arizona and New Mexico, we could recapture some of the magic of this archetypal road.
Interstate-40 in Arizona runs parallel to sections of Route 66 that still remain drivable and we first picked up it up through the town of Holbrook where one of the sites of Route 66 still remains in operation. The last WigWam Motel is on 66 as the road goes westwards out of the town.
These concrete wigwams are still in use though we decided against staying in one as the railroad runs just behind them and federal law obliges all trains to sound their horns as they approach crossings with roads whether it be day or night; their noise can be deafening.
We picked up the road again as it ran through Flagstaff then Williams of which more later then on through other towns, past isolated road stops such as the Hackberry general store,
I stood on the corner in Winslow, Arizona
the Roadkill Cafe,
a large green tiki outside a disused motel - why it is there no one remembers,
a beauty and barber shop with a DeSoto on its roof
and then we went north towards Las Vegas as Route 66 went on towards California.
This evocative two lane road linking Chicago with Los Angeles and passing through small towns and large cities was the only practical route linking the east coast and the mid-west with California and all places in between. Diners, gas stations, motor courts and tourist traps opened in some of the most isolated areas of America through the 30s and 40s until the newly built interstate highway system finally replaced it in the 1980s. The Department of Transportation finally rang the death knell for Route 66 when overnight on one night in 1984, all the Route 66 signs were taken down right along the route and only signs to the interstate system remained. Towns decayed and died and it is only in the last five or ten years that they have come back to life of sorts through the efforts of these towns to resurrect some of the memories of an America long gone that Route 66 now recalls.
To complicate things Route 66 took different directions at different times in the 30s and 40s as cities such as Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico, for instance, expanded. However with the use of a good guide book and the 'Historic Route 66' road signs throughout Arizona and New Mexico, we could recapture some of the magic of this archetypal road.
Interstate-40 in Arizona runs parallel to sections of Route 66 that still remain drivable and we first picked up it up through the town of Holbrook where one of the sites of Route 66 still remains in operation. The last WigWam Motel is on 66 as the road goes westwards out of the town.
These concrete wigwams are still in use though we decided against staying in one as the railroad runs just behind them and federal law obliges all trains to sound their horns as they approach crossings with roads whether it be day or night; their noise can be deafening.
We picked up the road again as it ran through Flagstaff then Williams of which more later then on through other towns, past isolated road stops such as the Hackberry general store,
I stood on the corner in Winslow, Arizona
the Roadkill Cafe,
a large green tiki outside a disused motel - why it is there no one remembers,
a beauty and barber shop with a DeSoto on its roof
and then we went north towards Las Vegas as Route 66 went on towards California.
A Monumental Site
Have you ever seen the John Ford film 'Stagecoach'? Do you remember the huge stone rolling and almost crushing Harrison Ford at the beginning of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'? Have you ever wondered where some of the sequences in those movies were filmed? The answer is Monument Valley which starts in Arizona then straddles and is mostly in Utah. This isn't a national park but instead is owned by the Navajo nation who live around and inside the park. This means that all access to the area is controlled by the Navajo, any travel off road into restricted areas inside the park can only be done with a Navajo guide.
Pathways and tracks off the highway around the park have signs saying 'Tourists Keep Out!' There is a 'scenic drive' through the park along an unmade track but only motorists who want to damage their tyres should really attempt it. Camping isn't allowed in the park and the only place to stay close to the park is Goulding's Lodge, a hotel and trading post that was set up in the 1930s by a Mr Goulding who, with John Ford, spent a lot of time inside the Navajo reservation looking at the strange rock structures and giving them names that would better attract tourists from California. So as a convenience to visitors there is the Elephant Rock, the Castle Rock, The Boot Rock and so on which are not the names that the Navajo use.We stayed in the nearby town of Kayenta which is also on Navajo land so some apparently strange rules applied. No alcohol appeared to be available anywhere. This meant that only expensive non-alcoholic wine or Kaliber non-alcoholic beer was on sale in the hotel which obviously didn't have a bar anyway. The Navajo nation keep to Mountain Standard Time but use Daylight Saving Time in the summer unlike the rest of Arizona - or is it the other way around? - but have the same time as Utah some of the time. This only became obvious when we checked into the hotel after booking a guide to take us around the park for 9.00am the following morning. We discovered that the hotel and the Navajo nation were an hour ahead of what we thought the time was. We never really found out when we should have got the hour back but instead we just put our watches to the rest of Arizona when we left the park, saved an hour and all seemed to be back in sequence when we finally stopped in Flagstaff later the next day.
Our guide, Dan, drove us round Monument Valley in a tribal owned Jeep which had to be the most beaten up and spartan 4x4 in the area.
Different guides drive different pool vehicles so as long as the engine works and the Jeep drives OK no one seems to worry about anything else. We weren't the first tourists of the day - a few had gone out soon after daybreak - but apart from a group of Japanese in a truck a few miles ahead we were for all intents the only vehicle in the park yet. Dan took us off road, showed us where water can be found for most of the year even in this arid, harsh environment, told us a little about life on the reservation and took us to meet a Navajo weaver who lives in an isolated canyon well off the beaten track."For a couple of dollars she will show you how she weaves", Dan said.
Not wanting to disturb the normal order of life we said that we wanted to meet her so we turned into her canyon, went up to her hogan - a Navajo building of juniper wood and stones covered with a thick coating of adobe to make it weatherproof - knocked on the wooden door but got no reply.
"She's not home", Dan said, "she may have gone to see one of her children early in the morning before the tourists arrive or she may have gone to buy groceries".
"Will she have gone to Basha's", - a chain of stores that we had seen that seemed to have the monopoly in Navajo lands - I asked. We had been into one in Tuba City to buy food for lunch the day previous and had been surprised how expensive a lot of goods were. There were offers on Navajo staples like Spam, mutton and corn husks but other lines were much more expensive than in stores elsewhere.
Dan smiled, "Oh no, she has probably driven up to Cortez (a town some distance away in Utah). We try to go to Wal*Mart if we can".
Dan drove us on up and down small tracks. We stopped at a photo-opportunity overlooking the mesa that was in 'Stagecoach' the John Wayne film of 1936 and which is a popular tourist stop-off. There was a sign saying 'Pictures on a horse $1' but where was the horse.
"Oh he's probably off having breakfast. Its still early for him." Dan said with a smile on his face.
Towards the end of our two and a half hours with Dan we drove back to the car park and places that a few hours earlier we had had to ourselves were now filling with clusters of tourists all taking the ideal Monument Valley picture. Drivers were attempting the self- drive through park route, in ordinary road cars and some even in large motor homes. The Navajo were out selling trinkets to passers-by.
We were so glad that for a couple of hours at least we had virtually had Monument Valley to ourselves.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
A Desert and a Forest
Last Thursday was another day visiting national parks, this time the Petrified Forest NP which includes the Painted Desert. Both, in different ways, were breathtaking experiences. The realisation that what is now desert was once prehistoric swampland and forest became more imaginable when we looked at the square mile after square mile of petrified wood spread across the landscape.
Whole trees had been slowly transformed into quartz and though the area had been used as a source of building material by Pueblo people in the past they made no great impact on the petrified trees. There were still masses of stone trees almost sprinkled like broken and discarded giant matchsticks on top of the sand. It was only when in the 19th Century that opportunist souvenir hunters and traders who made good livings taking the petrified wood out of the area by the wagon load started to impact on the 'wood'. The government created the park in 1906. to start to preserve the area.
Further on the road goes up from the remains of the prehistoric forest, scrub and brush takes over until suddenly we drove over a ridge and saw a huge pink and red and yellow depression in the earth which seemed to go for almost ever.
This was the Painted Desert. The colours which are produced by the prescence of different minerals in the sand and rock structures change colour through out the day and to take advantage of this tourist opportunity a local homesteader, Herbert Lore, built a lodge in 1924 to water, feed and provide a bed for the night for intrepid motorists who made their way out into the wilderness. And all this before any roads into this part of Arizona had been built. For $2-$4 a night they could stay in the inn, eat sandwiches or steaks and sit in the downstairs bar and look at the changing desert below them. Herbert Lore also offered his own car drives through the desert so that his visitors could better see the natural phenomenon. 
His Desert Inn was reopened as a ranger station and information centre in 2006 and it overlooks one of the understandably most popular view points in the park. We got there just after a bus full of high school students from Spartanburg, South Carolina on a cross American trip had stopped just ahead of us. The peace and tranquility of the moment was obviously lost but instead we were granted the opportunity of seeing an unusual way of taking a group picture in front of one of Nature's marvels in this part of Arizona. 
Whole trees had been slowly transformed into quartz and though the area had been used as a source of building material by Pueblo people in the past they made no great impact on the petrified trees. There were still masses of stone trees almost sprinkled like broken and discarded giant matchsticks on top of the sand. It was only when in the 19th Century that opportunist souvenir hunters and traders who made good livings taking the petrified wood out of the area by the wagon load started to impact on the 'wood'. The government created the park in 1906. to start to preserve the area.
Further on the road goes up from the remains of the prehistoric forest, scrub and brush takes over until suddenly we drove over a ridge and saw a huge pink and red and yellow depression in the earth which seemed to go for almost ever.
This was the Painted Desert. The colours which are produced by the prescence of different minerals in the sand and rock structures change colour through out the day and to take advantage of this tourist opportunity a local homesteader, Herbert Lore, built a lodge in 1924 to water, feed and provide a bed for the night for intrepid motorists who made their way out into the wilderness. And all this before any roads into this part of Arizona had been built. For $2-$4 a night they could stay in the inn, eat sandwiches or steaks and sit in the downstairs bar and look at the changing desert below them. Herbert Lore also offered his own car drives through the desert so that his visitors could better see the natural phenomenon. 
His Desert Inn was reopened as a ranger station and information centre in 2006 and it overlooks one of the understandably most popular view points in the park. We got there just after a bus full of high school students from Spartanburg, South Carolina on a cross American trip had stopped just ahead of us. The peace and tranquility of the moment was obviously lost but instead we were granted the opportunity of seeing an unusual way of taking a group picture in front of one of Nature's marvels in this part of Arizona. 
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
All on the Turn of a Card
Tonight we are in a small motel in a town in the mountains of eastern Arizona called Show Low which is just north of the White Mountain Apache Reservation lands. After yet another drive through breath taking scenery down one side of the San Carlos Canyon, across the Salt River then up the other side after driving over the El Capitan Pass 
which was first discovered by Kit Carson some years before he guided an American Army expedition into California over it in 1846, we reached a viewpoint called Becker Butte Lookout which gave us a true 'Kodak Moment'.
Later on, after driving through the Tonto Forest we got to Show Low and checked into our motel on a road called West Deuce of Clubs. Great names if a trifle unusual. What is the story behind them?
Back in the 1860s two men who had set up a large ranch in the area decided that they wanted to end their business relationship. But how were they to decide who would buy out who? Through a card game of course. They played and played but neither one was able to eliminate the other so finally they decided to cut cards and whoever 'showed low' would buy out the other and keep the ranch. The first player cut the pack and cut the deuce of clubs! Game, set and match to him. So that is why the town that was incorporated on part of the ranch land in 1870 is called Show Low and the main road through it is named Deuce of Clubs.
So here we are tonight, in a motel in Show Low, dining from a surprisingly good selection of kosher food from the local Safeway heated up in the room microwave and drinking Red Hook Long Hammer IPA. However, since there doesn't appear to be any Jewish community within miles of this place, did Safeway decide to stock a kosher range just for us? The mystery deepens.
which was first discovered by Kit Carson some years before he guided an American Army expedition into California over it in 1846, we reached a viewpoint called Becker Butte Lookout which gave us a true 'Kodak Moment'.
Later on, after driving through the Tonto Forest we got to Show Low and checked into our motel on a road called West Deuce of Clubs. Great names if a trifle unusual. What is the story behind them?
Back in the 1860s two men who had set up a large ranch in the area decided that they wanted to end their business relationship. But how were they to decide who would buy out who? Through a card game of course. They played and played but neither one was able to eliminate the other so finally they decided to cut cards and whoever 'showed low' would buy out the other and keep the ranch. The first player cut the pack and cut the deuce of clubs! Game, set and match to him. So that is why the town that was incorporated on part of the ranch land in 1870 is called Show Low and the main road through it is named Deuce of Clubs.
So here we are tonight, in a motel in Show Low, dining from a surprisingly good selection of kosher food from the local Safeway heated up in the room microwave and drinking Red Hook Long Hammer IPA. However, since there doesn't appear to be any Jewish community within miles of this place, did Safeway decide to stock a kosher range just for us? The mystery deepens.
Biosphere 2
Some time in the late 1980s, when scientists started to become interested in the feasibility of groups of people surviving for prolonged periods in totally closed environments by breathing recycled air, drinking recycled water and growing their own food, an experiment called Biosphere 2 was developed. The structure with all its ancillary support services was built in the desert outside Tucson at a cost then of about $150,000,000. Plants and some fauna to mimic conditions in tropical rain forests, temperate forests, deserts and oceans were located in self contained areas of the building and in 1992 a group of 4 men and 4 women passed through the airlocks of the Biosphere, were locked in and didn't return to the outside world, Biosphere-1, until 1994 when for a number of reasons the experiment had to be stopped. Since then apart from a 6 month period when a smaller group of scientists were locked in Biosphere 2 and another period when Colombia University New York ran some experiments on global warming and carbon dioxide emission in rain forests, Biosphere 2 has survived as a tourist attraction.
We had been told by a couple of Tucson locals not to expect too much if we visited Biosphere 2 and also to be ready to be stung by the high admission charge but, well, we thought we weren't likely to be this way again so lets do it.
So after paying our admissions we joined one of the tours of Biosphere 2 and believe me, the Tucson locals weren't too wrong. However there were some memorable bits to the tour. Our guide, Bill, took us from the dry heat of Arizona through an airlock into Biosphere 2 and into a very hot and humid part of the project that overlooked the synthetic ocean below and was next to the tropical rain forest area. Bill then walked us past a small area of long grass that he said represented a savannah environment.
"Why is it called a savannah?" Bill asked us. Total silence from we tour group members. "Because it has long grass growing in it." Bill answered his own question.
We stood in blank amazement trying to deduce the logic of the question and answer. Apparently the 8 people who were locked in for 2 years were nearly always hungry because they couldn't grow enough food in their cultivation area to give them much more than one good meal a day. The obvious question then was why didn't they turn more of the different environment areas to food production or why didn't one or more of them leave earlier in the project. But I didn't have the heart to ask Bill particularly after he told us that the project had not been successful because it was 'before its time' which is probably a synonym for 'it just didn't work'.
So after being impressed by the systems put into place in the 1990s that still continue to maintain the environments inside Biosphere 2 and by Bill's technique for looking after a tour group that seemed to be repeat most things he had said at least two or three times, we escaped from the artificial world of the 1990s back into the heat of the present day Arizona desert. Interesting structures, great engineering but perhaps the Eden Project is better.
I just put this picture in because I liked the pattern of the struts inside Biosphere 2.
We had been told by a couple of Tucson locals not to expect too much if we visited Biosphere 2 and also to be ready to be stung by the high admission charge but, well, we thought we weren't likely to be this way again so lets do it.
So after paying our admissions we joined one of the tours of Biosphere 2 and believe me, the Tucson locals weren't too wrong. However there were some memorable bits to the tour. Our guide, Bill, took us from the dry heat of Arizona through an airlock into Biosphere 2 and into a very hot and humid part of the project that overlooked the synthetic ocean below and was next to the tropical rain forest area. Bill then walked us past a small area of long grass that he said represented a savannah environment.
"Why is it called a savannah?" Bill asked us. Total silence from we tour group members. "Because it has long grass growing in it." Bill answered his own question.
We stood in blank amazement trying to deduce the logic of the question and answer. Apparently the 8 people who were locked in for 2 years were nearly always hungry because they couldn't grow enough food in their cultivation area to give them much more than one good meal a day. The obvious question then was why didn't they turn more of the different environment areas to food production or why didn't one or more of them leave earlier in the project. But I didn't have the heart to ask Bill particularly after he told us that the project had not been successful because it was 'before its time' which is probably a synonym for 'it just didn't work'.
So after being impressed by the systems put into place in the 1990s that still continue to maintain the environments inside Biosphere 2 and by Bill's technique for looking after a tour group that seemed to be repeat most things he had said at least two or three times, we escaped from the artificial world of the 1990s back into the heat of the present day Arizona desert. Interesting structures, great engineering but perhaps the Eden Project is better.
I just put this picture in because I liked the pattern of the struts inside Biosphere 2.
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