To Tucson and Beyond

4/30/23

You know, it’s very helpful to me to be blogging about our adventures… it makes me look at what day it is!! 😉

Since we don’t really know why the car transmission went up in smoke, we decided I would drive behind Paul in the car.

Leaving New Mexico and heading to Tucson gave us another opportunity to see such different landscapes. Flat desserts surrounded by rocky, gravelly mountains. It was beautiful!

It was a bit unnerving to see bright orange signs for 10 miles… instructions on what to do during a dust storm. “Pull off the road” “don’t touch the brakes” stay buckled”… the problem with that is the road doesn’t have a wide enough shoulder for an RV and there is loose gravel beyond the pavement. Fortunately we didn’t have to test our luck on the side of the road!

I chugged along behind the RV and topped out at 42.4 mpg!! That offsets the 7 mpg the RV gets! We also passed the 2500 mile mark for the trip and went through border patrol for the second time. I thought for sure the motor home would be stopped… how many illegals could be stowed in that?!? But they took one look at us and just waved us on. I was a bit surprised and relieved.

After 5.5 hours, we pulled into Picacho Peak State Park and were greeted by a very friendly park ranger and thousands of saguaro cactus (pronounced Sah-wah’-ro). It was so cool, actually amazing! Coming around the bend to the park entrance and all of the sudden there they were, arms reaching to the sky.

5/1&2/23

Well we actually had a morning to sleep in …we made it till almost 7 (we are in pacific time zone now) so we hung out with the cool morning breeze coming through the windows. It was lovely. Our original plan was to see our nephew and family in Tucson but his son wasn’t feeling so great so we will play that by ear.

Leisurely welcoming the day, we looked at what the park had to offer. We loaded Harley in the car (that works marvelously) and toured the park, stopping in the visitor center to get some tips from the rangers. We noticed that the cactus were in bloom and just popping out with colorful flowers.

Fun fact: The fish hook barrel grows tilted to the southwest (so you can find you way in the dessert).

After lunch, we got the text from David to say “come on over” so to Tucson we went, to his house, and met the kids for the first time. It was fun, chaotic (as expected with a 3&5 year old) and such a wonderful visit. We really miss family on this trip so this was a good family fix 🥰. So happy we could connect and visit.

After pizza and a lot of hugs from the fam, we headed to Saguaro National Park, just in time for an amazing sunset.

Tuesday, while eating breakfast, we had our wildlife peepers on and spotted a cactus wren, gold finch, lizards, chipmunk and round tailed ground squirrel (that looks like a miniature prairie dog). You know Dr Doolittle Dimmler was in his element!

We decided to get going and do a couple of trails in the park. Harley loved the new smells on the trail, I was busy looking for rattlesnakes, and we all enjoyed the cooler temperatures this morning.
Saguaro fun facts: They live to be 200 years old and don’t develop their “arms” until they are 50-60 years old! Also, the flowers open at night so the bats can feed on the nectar and stay open through the cooler mornings for the birds and bees. The saguaro flowers are like little flower bouquets on the end of each arm.

We headed to the Pima Air and Space museum, the largest non governmental museum of aeronautical items. Every boy loves airplanes, including this one!

A good day of immersing ourselves in the area. 😁

Harley had an active day, well hydrated with almost 2 quarts of water herself… fortunately we brought 3 water bottles for our desert excursions.