During the last weekend before I returned to work, John decided to surprise me and Mary by taking us on a day trip.  He would not tell us where we were going, nor would he give us any hints.  He just instructed us to take a jacket and get into the car.

The route that John took kept us guessing all the way until the end.  Upon leaving the house, we took SR 51 south to I-10, then took US 60 east.  At Florence Junction, he turned onto SR 79 and started going south.  "Hmm," I thought.  "This is a new route for us."

Sometime later, we arrived in Florence.  From there, John turned onto SR 287, and that was when I saw the a sign that indicated a possible destination: Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. 

"That's it!" John smiled.  He was taking us to see the Casa Grande Ruins, so that we could once again use our National Park Pass, and so that Mary could get another stamp in her Passport book. 

Even though we have spent a lot of time in the Casa Grande area, while John went skydiving in Eloy, Mary and I had never been up to the Casa Grand Ruins before.  It had crossed my mind once or twice that we should go there, but I had never gotten around to it.

Casa Grande - or "Big House" in Spanish - is just that: a big adobe house once inhabited the ancient Indians who had lived in that area.  The house is, for the most part, completely intact and now sits under a tent to protect it from the blazing sun.  The entrances to the ruins are sealed and visitors are encouraged not to touch the structure, but we were allowed to venture around the grounds look at the big house up close and to see the other ruins as well. 

(On a side note, despite the efforts of the National Park Service to protect the ruins from visitors, it is in fact nature itself that has taken its toll on the structure.  Colonies of ground squirrels have begun burrowing themselves into the adobe walls of the house and are nesting there.  It is causing the walls to crumble...)

We spent about an hour at the Casa Grand Ruins, taking pictures of the ruins and even getting a family shot of the three of us standing next to the big house.  Once we had seen everything there was to see, we then got back into the car and headed off to find a place for us to eat lunch before John drove us to our next secret destination.

John stopped at a Subway in Coolidge so that we could get sub sandwiches for lunch; we ate those in the car while John drove.  He backtracked to SR 79 then took that south towards Tucson.  "Curious," I thought, "is he taking us to Catalina State Park...or to another place that is close by?"

In Oracle Junction, John turned onto SR 77, and that was when I figured out our next destination: we were going to visit the Biosphere II.

Sitting out in the desert at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains, the Biosphere II was an experimental "world", in which scientists had recreated all of the different zones of the earth, all within the glass domes of the structure.  During the early part of the 90's, groups of scientists would live in the Biosphere for long periods of time, living on the fruits of their artificially created world - this experiment was heavily publicized, and there was a huge hoopla surrounding the end of the experiment, when the scientists finally emerged from their little colony. (At that time, my brother Clyde was working as a tour guide at the Biosphere II and had invited me to attend the big event, but since I had to work that day, I wasn't able to go.)

Scientists have not lived in the Biosphere for quite some time, but experimentation continues within the glass walls of the Biosphere.  Tour groups are allowed to go through the colony to learn about those experiments and to see how the scientists lived and worked as well.

When we arrived on that chilly afternoon, we paid for our admission tickets then began the self-guided tour of the park and museums surrounding the Biosphere II.  On our first stop, we watched a short film about the building and management of the Biosphere II.  From there, we went through some of the experimental greenhouses, where we saw a wide variety of plants, both native and non-native to Arizona, being grown in a variety of conditions.  Finally, at the end of our self-guided tour, we stopped at the café to wait for our tour guide to come and get us.

Our tour began at 1:00 p.m., at which time we and about thirty other people followed our tour guide up to the Biosphere II.  We entered through an airlock and stepped into the apartment that once housed the scientists who lived there.  The tour guide allowed us to roam freely for about ten minutes; although we were not allowed to enter any of the rooms, we were able to peer into the windows to see how these people lived there.  Nearby, there was a room filled with informational kiosks, where we could learn about the experiments that went on inside there.

At the end of the ten minutes, the tour guide called us back into the kitchen/common room, where we were split up into four smaller groups.  At three-minute intervals, each group left the kitchen and began the tour of the various zones that had been created in the Biosphere.

The tour was very interesting; it started out at a point overlooking an artificial ocean, complete with crashing waves, then visited just about every zone on the earth.  There were riparian areas, high deserts, the tropics, and even a rare coastal desert area found only in Chile.  It didn't stop there, though; we soon left the foliage and descended into the underbelly of the beast, where we were shown the colony's hydration system.  At the very end of the tour, though, was a trip through the "lungs" of the colony: a large, rubberized contraption that literally breathed life into the Biosphere.  The tour guide allowed us to walk underneath the lung, so that we could feel its weight and its rubbery surface.  It was sort of like being underneath an oversized, under-inflated Earth ball.

Our guided tour ended there; at the end of the respirator room was the exit, where we were required to dip the soles of our shoes in bleach so as not to contaminate Biosphere I (the external world) with bacteria from the artificial world inside.  After that, we were allowed to leave the building. 

Although our guided tour was over, there was still more to see; below the Biosphere, there was an oceanic exhibit, where we could view the fish living in the artificial ocean.  There were also hands-on displays for kids of all ages.  Mary did not care too much for the displays, but she was captivated by the ocean, because there were fish there that she recognized from the movie "Finding Nemo". 

We only spent a few minutes looking through the oceanic exhibit; by the time we got there, it was already after 2:00 p.m., so it was way past Mary's nap time.  John suggested that we call it a day, so we left the Biosphere and started walking back to the car.

Mary fell asleep as soon as we drove away.  During the next couple of hours, while we had quiet time, John finished his scenic excursion by taking SR 79 back into Coolidge, then by taking SR 87 to SR 387, which connected to I-10.

Once again, John had succeeded in creating a nice diversion for us; it got us out of the house and gave us a chance to enjoy time together as a family while doing something fun.  It really helped to take our mind off of the events of the past two months.  Truly a nice surprise...

Return to Naked in the Woods.