TAKING THE OFF-RAMP

Adopt a 100-yearold Grandchild

Retirees Marion and Gene Simons have adopted a 100year-old grandchild named Nonie. Nonie Harter was born in 1892 and interred at age 2.

A cross section of pioneers rests in Prescott's gated but unlocked Citizens Cemetery. Archives reveal a disproportionate number of children. Infant mortality ran high.

Yavapai Cemetery Association sponsors the Adopt a Pioneer Gravesite Project. It also issues quarterly Gravemarker newsletters and offers programs on pioneer history.

The Simonses visit, tend and beautify Nonie's grave. After choosing this child, the couple received a short biography with her family history, along with a certificate of adoption.

When founded in 1864, Citizens Cemetery occupied a remote spot. Prescott has since grown around the location at 815 E. Sheldon St.

Historians and genealogists peruse tombstones and faded markers. If your family is "old Arizona," you might find a few ancestors there.

Arizona Talussnail Loves Rainy Season

One of the rarest animals in the world lives in southern Arizona. The San Xavier talussnail makes its home in a 5,000-square-foot tumble of limestone outside Tucson and nowhere else on Earth.

Smaller than a quarter, this unique invertebrate sports a whitish-pink, whorled shell with a chestnut-brown band. Since it is very sensitive to drying, the species protects itself from the Arizona sunshine by crawling deep into cool, moist rock fissures, where it may stay inactive for as long as three years, waiting for conditions wet enough to venture out into the open.

After a rain, the snails emerge to feed, mate and lay eggs, before returning to the shelter of the rocks to hide out until the next rainy season.

Even though the talussnail is extremely rare and sensitive to human intrusion, the federal government has not awarded it protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Powered Paragliders Take to the Sky

If you're hankering to navigate a personal aircraft, there's an alternative to time-consuming, costly lessons, or even obtaining an airplane pilot's license. Instead, you can immediately fulfill your flying fantasies by becoming a powered paraglider pilot in just days at Airparamo in Phoenix.

Also called paramotoring, flying these aircraft is relatively safe, affordable, easy to learn and doesn't require a license or registration. Unlike hang gliding, paragliding doesn't require a lot of strength. It does, however, require maximum concentration as you learn critical techniques.

Airparamo programs are divided into three consecutive courses: discovery flights, solo flight training and daily flight training. Besides flight instruction and instructor certification and training, Airparamo sells paramotoring equipment and accessories, and provides repair services.

Year-round flight training is available in metro Phoenix, Casa Grande and near Lake Pleasant, although Airparamo will provide lessons at a location near you.

Information: (602) 692-7995; www.airparamo.com.

Territorial Taxes

Territorial Flagstaff brought taxation to a new level when it levied the following unusual licensing fees:

At least the town gave local "business people" a break.

Hydroponic Tomato Tours

Tour Eurofresh Farms in Willcox for an amazing look at how tomatoes are grown year-round. Approximately 300,000 pounds per day of tomatoes are grown hydroponically in 212 acres of glass greenhouses, then shipped throughout the United States. Inside, the temperature is a pleasant 70 to 80 degrees with 68 percent humidity. The 90-minute, wheelchairaccessible tour takes you through a "forest" of tomato vines that can reach more than 45 feet high. The vines grow up strings; bumblebees take care of pollination. You can taste different tomato varieties, take a few home and pick up tips like "never refrigerate tomatoes." Wednesday-only tours are free, and are limited in size. Information: (520) 384-4621.

Taliesin Twilight Tours

Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America's most famous architects, wrote in a story for Arizona Highways in 1949: "Living in the desert is the spiritual cathartic a great many people need. I am one of them." Wright fell in love with the Arizona landscape while collaborating on designs for the Arizona Biltmore in 1927. In 1937, Wright bought several hundred acres in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains and began building Taliesin West, his field school and home. Created from desert materials, using colorful bouldersand sand, Taliesin West ultimately has included three theaters, a drafting studio, living quarters, kitchens, an office, workshops, dining areas and sunken gardens. Tours operate year-round to view many of these spaces, linked by walkways and splashing fountains; however, Night Lights on the Desert tours operate only March through October. These spectacular two-hour twilight tours are offered Friday evenings. Lighted from within at sundown, Taliesin West becomes a radiant jewel, capturing all the romance of the West. Information: (480) 860-2700.

A Wave of Relief

Since December 26, the organizers of Tsunami on the Square in Prescott have had to work hard to make the best of an unfortunate irony. In doing so, they have created an unusual festival. Operating this year with a "Wake of the Flood" theme, the performing and cultural arts festival has teamed up with world help organizations like UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders and will donate 10 percent of the event proceeds to Southeast Asia Tsunami relief efforts. From the strange to the sublime, actors, dancers, musicians, comedians and performing artists are set to offer a global range of unique, live presentationswhile the Children's Cove, Beachcomber's Bazaar and the signature Pyrotechnic Spectacle promise fun for the whole family. The two-day outdoor event takes place June 17-18 in Prescott's historic Courtyard Plaza. Information: (928) 445-5540; www.tsunami-on-the-square.com.

Controlling the Weather

Born in Bisbee in 1894, Lewis W. Douglas was a successful businessman, Arizona congressman and ambassador to the Court of St. James. By the early 1950s, Douglas had become interested in irrigating the desert, and in 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him to head a committee on weather control. Douglas turned to an unusual man for help. Wilhelm Reich had worked under Sigmund Freud in the 1920s, eventually coming to believe in what he termed "orgone energy," the primordial life force that permeates the universe. Theorizing that nuclear emissions and smog were blocking this energy field, Reich developed a "cloudbuster," a series of metal tubes connected by cables to a water source with supposed rainmaking capability. In October 1954, Douglas summoned Reich to Oracle, north of Tucson, to bring water to the arid soil. Oddly, Douglas and Reich never met in person, but according to Reich's adherents, by November he had turned the desert into a green pasture.

The Weavers Way Navaje Profiles {taking the off ramp} Weaving Tales

Navajo artists put a little of themselves into every traditional rug they weave. So when buyers ask Bah Yazzie Ashley to put special designs into her rugs, she says, “It doesn't work; patterns must take shape in your heart.” Similarily, Navajo weaver Roy Kady hopes that the people who buy his rugs “feel the essence of happiness” in them.

Considering the personal touches Navajo weavers leave in their work, it is surprising that few books highlight their lives and faces. However, Carter and Dodie Allen's The Weavers Way: Navajo Profiles dispels the mist obscuring many Navajo weavers.

The Weavers Way profiles 36 Navajo weavers. Their striking portraits and individual histories infuse into the ancient craft of Navajo weaving the warmth and personality that, due to the artists' past anonymity, had been sadly absent.

Vintage Village From Territorial Days

The architectural history of early Arizona settlers is preserved at the Pioneer Arizona Living History Village in Phoenix. Children look pitiful gripping the bars of jail cells in the sheriff's office. People “ooh” and “ahh” when red-hot metal hits water in the blacksmith's bucket. From a barbershop to a military flagpole top, a trip to the village is a day well-spent.

Each building at the village dates from 1863 to 1912. An opera house came from Prescott, a miner's cabin from Clifton and a Victorianstyle house from Phoenix. Other buildings are reconstructions based on old photographs. At 11:30 A.M. every day that it's open, you can witness a Hollywood-style gunfight and presentation by the gunfight coordinator on gun safety in the modern world.

from 1863 to 1912. An opera house came from Prescott, a miner's cabin from Clifton and a Victorianstyle house from Phoenix. Other buildings are reconstructions based on old photographs. At 11:30 A.M. every day that it's open, you can witness a Hollywood-style gunfight and presentation by the gunfight coordinator on gun safety in the modern world.

Information: (623) 465-1052; www.pioneer-arizona.com.

Trained Eyes

Few of the countless color pictures of the trains that traveled along the famous Grand Canyon Railway taken between 1940 and 1970 have survived to this day.

However, during the late '80s, those yearning to see what the line was like got a second chance when it was reopened, and many antique trains were brought to Arizona to carry travelers to the Grand Canyon. Restored to their past glory, some of the trains contested the image of classic, black locomotives by sporting dark roofs and green sides accentuated by gold lettering or trim that was cream, gold or royal blue.

Documenting the line's colorful history and trains, Al Richmond and Marc Pearsall's The Grand Canyon Railway: Sixty Years in Color brings together a fascinating mix of rare, color photographs from the Grand Canyon Railway's past and vibrant snapshots of its present that prove the journey to the Grand Canyon can be almost as much of an adventure as the Canyon itself. Information: (800) 843-8724.

The San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff exemplify a stratovolcano. While the San Francisco Peaks aren't classified as extinct, it's highly unlikely an eruption will occur again.