EMPS: More Municipal Madness

Tuesday afternoon for Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #35: Government Buildings, I showed you an interesting modern building in which the City of Tucson houses (part of) Tucson Water and a police substation. It's at the end of Randolph Park, which is adjacent to Reid Park. Together with an historic Tucson neighborhood I've love to live in, the two parks form a mostly-green oasis in the middle of the city. And as you know if you read this blog regularly, Reid Park is also the site of two urban lakes, a few rather wonderful art installations, a rose garden, my dogs' beloved Miko's Corner Playground dog park, and other attractions, including the buildings I'm about to show you.

One of the buildings of Reid Park Zoo. Wonder what it's like inside? So do I.

From the Picasa album Tucson Modern

I'm not 100% sure this first one even qualifies as a building. Certainly the ciderblock(?) walls are buildingesque, and there may be a real roof over a few storage rooms or somesuch. But the most prominent feature is this huge, white, tent-like ramada. (A ramada is a roof without walls, commonly used in sunny climes to provide shade but leave the structure otherwise open to fresh outside air.) I'm thinking this may be an aviary, but I don't really know. Someday when money is less of an issue, I'll pay my admission and find out!

Another mysterious zoo buiding.

This building is next to the "Big Top" one. It definitely has a modern, um, slant!

Ths "Big Top" as seen from one of the duck ponds at dusk.

I took these photos and the Hardesty building ones on Monday, sometime after 6 PM. I left the car parked at the zoo and walked the dogs past the duck pond and the rose garden (the gate to which was closing, for it was sunset) to the dog park. Afterward we walked back the way we'd come, more or less, back to the car at the other end of the park.

The zoo buildings at dusk have a different quality to them as the lights come on, sort of pretty and peaceful instead of just odd and deserted.

I wasn't quite ready to leave Reid Park, even then. I headed north from the zoo buildings, passing this practice field, where some sort of actual baseball was actually talking place. Taking pictures at dusk on the automatic setting, with no flash and no tripod, gave the images a slightly dark and grainy quality that for once I really liked.

Hi Corbett Field at dusk, post-Rockies and pre-Toros.

And here we are at my favorite government-owned building in all of Tucson: Hi Corbett Field, spring training home of the Colorado Rockies and once and future home of the Tucson Toros.

By late May, this place won't be deserted at dusk!

The reconstituted, no-longer-AAA Toros begin play on May 21st, two days after John and I celebrate 30 years of marriage. And we'll be there!

Karen