Weekend Trip

It was high time that I had to go out somewhere this weekend. I had spent 7 weekends sitting at home doing nothing. So we(Dinesh and I) decided to goto Petrified Forest and Paited desert. It is about 4-5 hours of drive from our place. As the name indicates, it is a national park with a natural collection of millions of years old fossil and petrified wood. Friday was the day I was waiting for and at last, it was Friday. I made a word document of all the places to see and what to do there(Sri and I had done such a word document before we went to Kerala trip). I took printouts of all driving directions. Went home at 5PM(little early for me). We had decided the menu. I was supposed to cook bisi bele bath(I am supposed to be very good at it).

Friday evening when we went to play volley ball(we play every evening), it was too windy, so we came back soon. I checked weather and to our bad luck, there was 50% chances of rain in whole of Arizona. It was 8:30PM and I called Dinesh to enquire. He too was concerned and only place where we could still go in rain was Tucson. Which has a Bio Sphere 2, Pima air and space museum and huge caves. We decided to leave at around 8:30 in the morning. It was just about 2 hours drive from our home.

Saturday, I got a phone call at 7:15AM which broke my dream. Till now I don't remember what was I dreaming. I guess it was pleasant. So I woke up, and it was Deepa(Dinesh's wife). She had called to invite me for breakfast. She asked me if bisi bele bath was over. For a moment I thought, said vegetables and rice+dal are cooked I have to mix them. It was a plain lie. Got up quickly, did daily routines and started cooking bisi bele bath. To my bad luck I didn't even have pressed clothes. So all in all, I was ready by 9:00AM.

We finished breakfast and set off at 9:30. According to microsoft Streets and Trips, we were supposed to finish our trip at 4:30PM. We were 30 min. behind schedule. There was no confusion in roads, thanks to MS Streets and Trips. The route which we took was better than I-10. We reached Bio Sphere 2 at around 12:30PM. It is called BioSphere 2, because the place we live on, earth, is Bio Sphere 1!! It was created to experiment artifical habitats. The plan was to create a similar living environment on moon. Later it was scraped, bla bla bla.
Entry fee was $19.99. Oh my god, for a stupid 1 hour tour, it was more than my half of my per diem. We had already watched artificial habitats in movies. It had rain forests, desert, marine life and so on.

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We decided to go to our next destination, Kartchner Caverns national park, which has world famous caves. I drove and drove in the busy town of Tucson. There was no sign of freeway for half an hour. Already all of us were feeling hungry. We did not get any place to stop and eat. Finally we got freeway(I-10). Our next destination was about 30 miles furhter east. We did not get any roadside bench, where we could have lunch. Dinesh was suggesting Colosal Caves, which was on the way, thanks to MS Streets and Trips. We decided to take some exit, park somewhere and eat our lunch. I took the next exit, and to our luck it was the exit to Colosal caves. There was a picnic area where we finished our lunch, food was excellent. Went to see Colosal Cave. It was about 1 hour guided tour. Took some nice pictures. By this time it was 3:45PM.

Then we started towards our original destination, Kartchner Caverns. Reached wihtout confusion. The guard near the gate came out and asked "What can I do for you?". I was speechless for a moment. Then I fumbled, "we want to see the cave." Then we were informed that last tour was over at 4:15 and there were no more tours that day. So we took a U turn. We decided to head straight to home, since the museum would also be closed by the time we reach there. Dinesh took over stearing from me. I took out me camera and started shooting. Took some nice pictures. It rained heavily on the way back. It was hard to see lane markings. Reached home safe at around 7:30.

All in all, we did not see anything that we had planned for. But still it was a good refreshing weekend trip!!