Day 7 - A Cold War and a Warm Cave

For our last day in Tucson, we saw the Titan Missile Museum and Kartchner Caverns.  On the way to the Titan Museum, we quickly stopped by to see Mission St. Xavier.   It was a very ornate mission church.   They are in the midst of restoring it.

The inside of the church was packed with painted images and scenes.

Then it was off to the Titan museum.   This is the only Titan museum in the country.    All the rest of the silos were filled in.

It was very impressive.   The safeguards, the backup systems, and the security measures were amazing.   They had exhibits above ground and then they took us underground.   This is the first stage rocket engine.

This is the missile in the silo.   It is of course inoperative.

Now we head underground.

This is the control room.   It was very spooky to be down here.   It is all God's doing that we didn't blow ourselves up back then.

This is the walkway that seperates the control room and crews quarters from the silo.

Here's the view of the missile from one of the areas that would have been used for maintenance.

Here's one of the huge doors.   Look how thick it is.

The children all said that they really liked the museum.   I guess it seemed like ancient history to them.   I kept thinking about all those years that we thought the Soviets were going to kill us all.   So it was a weird feeling seeing this museum.

On the way out of the parking lot, we saw a road runner!   And yes, all the children saw it.

We don't have any pictures of Kartchner Caverns since they don't allow any picture taking there.   They are very very concerned with keeping the cave in pristine condition so we couldn't take anything in the cave except ourselves.   It was a very impressive cave and the children enjoyed themselves.   We saw thin soda straw formations and "curtain" formations that looked like big strips of bacon.   We saw an 5 story column that was amazing along with the traditional stalagtites and stalagmites.   I was glad that someone else discovered this cave.   I don't think I could have done it.

The next day, we headed home.   During one of our flights, the pilot noticed Aaron peeking into the cockpit and he invited Aaron in to sit in his seat.   Pretty cool!