We then drove down to Tubac, about 45 minutes south on I-19. As it turned out when we got there, the annual Tubac Festival of the Arts was in progress. The whole town that is not very big and seemed to consist mainly of art galleries, sculptor studios, jewelry, metal working and curio ships all featuring Southwestern and Indian motif fine arts and other things (I didn't see any scalps for sale however). It had been turned into a street fair for the festival with booths lining virtually every street. We couldn't begin to see it all, but a lot of it we were not interested in anyway (e.g. Mexican metal lawn art and decorated pottery). So, we walked around awhile and had a nice lunch after a 30 minute wait at a highly rated local restaurant.
After lunch we visited the Tubac Presidio State Historic Park in the old part of town. The original buildings are all gone but the site has a lot of historical significance in Arizona history. It is the site of one of the original Spanish missions and the site of the first European settlement in Arizona.
It is also the site where, in 1775-1776, the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza led some 240 men, women, and children on a 1200 mile journey to establish the first non-Native settlement at San Francisco Bay. His route has since been established as the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail connecting history, culture, and outdoor recreation from Nogales, Mexico to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Over the years the town has had its ups-and-downs but is now an established artists colony and the home to what appear to be a significant number of retirees. I am not sure what a retiree would actually do there, but there did appear to be a golf course and shoveling snow is definitely not a wintertime experience.
On the way back we stopped at the Titian Missile Museum abut 15 miles south of Tucson. The museum is at the last existing Titian II Missile site and is now a National Historic Landmark. The Titian II Missiles were deployed in the early 1960s in the teeth of the Cold War. They were the biggest missiles the US ever deployed and each missile had a 9 megaton hydrogen bomb as a warhead. There were 54 Titian II missile sites at three bases (Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, McConnell AFB in Wichita, Kansas and Little Rock AFB in Little Rock, Arkansas) each with 18 missile sites. When the Tucson missile wing deactivated in 1982, it was decided to keep and preserve one of the sites as a museum and a memorial to the time and the people involved. Since then, hundreds of volunteers, former missillers and donors have kept the museum going and it is now a thriving attraction in the area.
The visit brought back a lot of memories for me as we were stationed at Little Rock, Arkansas from 1981-1985 in the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, the last of the Titian II Missile wings which deactivated in 1987. We had a great tour of the missile site and museum and are pleased it has been preserved as a part of our nation's history.
After stopping for a few groceries and gas ($1.39 per gallon) we had dinner in the RV and early to bed. We have a long road trip tomorrow to Tombstone and maybe Bisbee if we feel up to it.
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