It Does Not Get Better Than This

Gilbert Ray Campground, Tucson. Just now, after a rain that will make the desert green.

                                        זוֹכֵר הַבְּרִית וְנֶאֱמָן בִּבְרִיתוֹ וְקַיָם בְּמַאֲמָרוֹ

Tucson - Historic Area

We have been in the Tucson area for almost a month with lots more to do. This is from a few weeks ago. I'll be posting more...

We signed up for the excellent Tucson Historic City Bike Tour to get oriented.

The Pima County Historic Courthouse. It will get a post of its own.

Tucson does love its Murals and its Biking ("El Tour de Tucson" is a big thing) 

Great color, even on an overcast day

Navajo Folk Art for sale at Old Town Artisans

Seeing The Invisible - Augmented Reality in the Botanical Garden*

We went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens for the flora, but we stayed for the Augmented Reality Art Exhibition.

I am a botanical garden junkie as some of you may know, but also a techy nerd, as you may also know. So, when we got to the gardens and found out an Augmented Reality exhibit called "Seeing The Invisible", developed in part by the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, was showing, we were totally up for it. Although we had never heard of augmented reality.

Bob downloaded the app and I got a loaner tablet (no remaining storage on my phone having just used up the little that was left by downloading the Merlin birding app), and with 3 minutes of instruction and a map of the 14 artwork locations, we were off, having only a vague idea what to expect. 

This was our first try: 

What was there

What we saw through our screens

Ok. Interesting.

The second one we came to was a framed, constantly changing, abstract image floating in the air.

Next was a piece called “Gilded Cage.” I didn’t even take a picture.

We finally got into the spirit of things with this one, "Salt Stalagmite."

Here, Bob posed with a weirdly morphing guy dancing. The dancer looks more real than Bob. By now we had figured out we could position the image in different starting locations (within a range). For example, we were able to get this guy to do his complete dance in the air.

Now that Bob had figured out how to take a screen shot with his phone, I am in some pictures. I pose with a bouquet of flowers that is not there. Then the bouquet explodes. We watch petals and leaves drift all around us as we turn in a circle.

Depending on where we placed the image and where we stood, this torus was huge or small.

It wasn’t until we got to this last and seemingly unimpressive boulder, that I figured out that there was even more to these illusions than we had realized.

I figured there had to be more to this piece, and I tried walking into the doorway… and walked into a dark corridor with lighted symbols on the walls! I kept walking, and went through a blue glowing portal into space. Whoh!

Looking back from inside the corridor, and the portal

Of course, now I had to go back and revisit the whole thing to figure out if any of the other artworks also had a “trick” to them. And some did. I was able to go inside the Salt Stalagmite and Gilded Cage.

This would be a good time to say that I didn’t realize I could take pictures with my loaner tablet until the second go through, and then didn’t realize that I had to save the pictures I took. Unfortunately, when I realized that all the great photos I had taken with the tablet hadn’t been saved, Bob refused to go back a third time and let me retake them. (To be fair, he had been very patient up till this point. I had already used up the batteries on my first tablet and had traded it in for a second. And the gardens were closing soon.)

To sum up, this art exhibition is showing in only 12 botanical garden locations in the world. If you are near one, I highly recommend going. To my friends in Israel, go to the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens. In the US, it is only in Tucson, San Diego, Denver, Sarasota, and Wellesley, MA. In Canada, the Canada Royal Botanical Gardens.

And if you do go, here’s some advice from personal experience: Make sure to look away from the screen every so often so that you don’t trip over a rock or anything. Or if in Tucson, so you don’t walk into a cactus.

*According to the official website, https://seeingtheinvisible.art/menu/ , the difference between AR and VR is “Augmented reality (AR) adds digital elements to a live view, often by using the camera on a smartphone or tablet. Virtual reality (VR) involves a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world, often by using a specialized VR headset. “

It’s Not as Easy to Hug a Cactus As It Looks

We took that left turn at Albuquerque, again!, and look what we found… 

A Sudden Decision

For almost 2 weeks, we were happily making the rounds of Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, when suddenly, as if a switch flipped in my brain, I was, “Enough of the plains, I need landscape that has definition!” And Bob was, “Enough with the cold!” 

So, we wrapped up what we wanted to do in Wichita, KS and a day later we were in New Mexico.

See what I mean? 

Iowa

Nebraska

Kansas

Oklahoma

Texas

New Mexico! 

I know exactly how Dorothy felt - "We're not in Kansas anymore!" 

Currently in Tucson, AZ, in the shul parking lot where we camped over Shabbos Rosh Chodesh Chanukah. Happy Chanukah!