Today, Ellen and I decided to take Speedy up to Sells, a town within the Tohono O' Odham Reservation where we had heard there was a good restaurant with traditional foods, the Desert Rain Cafe. It was about as far as Tucson, but when we got out to the road to Tucson at Three Points, we turned left. The town is the administrative center for the reservation and the restaurant is in a small mall with a supermarket, Basha's, a hair salon and several social services organizations.
We were a bit early for lunch so we poked around in the small gallery that is part of Desert Rain and the market (never ones to miss a chance to buy more food). In addition to the crafts in the gallery, they were also selling some native foods, including tepary beans, a small brown bean that is drought-tolerant and grows in the desert. It is a traditional food in the area, high in protein and with a low glycemic index. A brochure that was nearby bemoaned the fact that the tribe has the highest type 2 diabetes rate in the country, over 50% of adults are diabetic (!), not from the beans or probably other traditional foods.
We looked into the supermarket, a local chain that has several stores in Tucson, and the first thing we saw was the huge array of donuts followed by the fried food section. It has the largest selection of types of Spam that I'd seen in any market and of course you could buy white flour in the 50-pound bag to go along with the gallon cans of lard. They had many aisles of prepared foods, cookies, soda and snacks and a relatively tiny vegetable section. No wonder they have a diabetes problem.
The restaurant, on the other hand, was quite good. And our meal was certainly more healthful, even if we did get the daily special, the Red Chile Plate, beef in a red chile sauce with sides of tepary beans and a salad with greens, apples and pumpkin seeds and a prickly pear vinaigrette.
On our way back from lunch, we decided to climb Kitt Peak. Actually, Speedy climbed Kitt Peak via the 12-mile road to the top. Kitt Peak is the home of the Kitt Peak National Observatory and the National Solar Observatory. There are 22 optical telescopes and two radio telescopes as part of the National Observatory (I'm not sure if that includes the two solar telescopes).
We got a chance to do some solar observing in a small dome on the Solar Observatory section of the peak, through two small telescopes and visited the 500-foot long McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, which wasn't in use at the time but impressive none-the-less. We were also able to stop at the 2.1 meter telescope which was open but also not in use being daytime.
As we were walking from one telescope to the other, a couple of birds alighted on the trees along the path. They were obviously jays of some type, but we didn't recognize them. Ellen got a couple of photos and when we got back to the refuge, we were able to determine that they were Mexican Jays. They only get as far north as southern Arizona and New Mexico and Kitt Peak is one of their haunts.
Another life bird for Ellen so she was happy.
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