The area has since been surrounded by suburban Tucson. He died in 1982 and his compound is now a historic site run by a non-profit that he set up to avoid a heafty inheritance tax. Glad he did. It is a beautiful gallery and has so many of his originals that they need to rotate exhibits. They even had a painting he did of the San Xavier Mission.DeGrazia was the son of Italian immigrants and grew up in a mining town. He moved to Tucson to attend the University and stayed there. His first paintings were published in "Arizona Highways." His rise to fame and fortune came when his painting "Los Ninos" was chosen as an Unicef greeting card and sold millions. He almost literally went from starving artist to millionaire overnight. But money did not change his attitudes or lifestyle. He has done a number of different style paintings and a number of different media including pottery, fabric design, and jewlery.
We arrived at the gallery just in time to join a privately arranged tour which was very informative.
It was getting hot (they are having record setting temperatures this week) so we decided to head out to the Biosphere 2, which is about 20 miles north. We hadn't had lunch yet, but when we got there they told us to go down for the 1:30 tour and that the tour would be about an hour. We noted a cafe on the way down and figured we would have lunch after the tour.
It turned out that we had a large group on the tour (about 40) so the tour took two hours instead of one. At times we wondered if we were going to be involuntarily part of a new human experiment.
The tour took us through about 5 different habitats from foggy desert to rain forest all enclosed from the outside world. They even had a small ocean. Biosphere 2 was originally built in 1991 with donations from one individual to see if humans could live in an artificially created environment. There was a 2-year human experiment followed by a 1 year experiment which ended early. After that the Biosphere was opened up to tourists and used for earth science experiments by universities. In 2011 the University of Arizona was gifted the facility and is using it for research.
Some facts about Biosphere 2 (note that Biosphere 1 is the earth itself): It is a glass-enclosed facility of 3.14 acres, 91 feet tall at its highest point and sealed from earth below by a 500-ton welded stainless-steel liner.
We left the tour at about 3:30, tired, hot, and hungry. After hiking back to the Visitor Center we discovered that the cafe closed at 3:00. Fortunately, we had brought along some emergency protein bars in the car. We found some prickly pear syrup in the gift store and bought some to try with our margaritas.
We went back to the condo for a late lunch and rest before starting out at about 5:30 to find a local park named Honey Bee Canyon Park. It was only two miles away, but hard to find the entrance to the parking area (you can only get to it from one side of a divided road). We drove slow and found it. It has a nice loop trail through a wash (dry river bed). It was close to sunset so we just walked a little way and hiked back to the parking area which was on higher ground to try and take a good picture of the sunset.
As we were looking for a good vantage point, T noticed a number of folks with cameras and tripods up a short trail on the other side of the lot. Sensing a good photo opportunity, we headed that way and discovered their cameras were pointing away from the sunset at the mountains. They told us they were waiting for the full moon to rise over the mountains just after sunset. The moon took its time, but when it arrived, it was spectacular.
We headed home to our prickly pear margaritas feeling that this was a special day.
Tomorrow is a free day -- our last day in Tucson.
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