It's Tucson Time

A warm welcome to Tucson, so nice to be welcomed by friends.  A good meal, a bottle of wine, and a soft bed.  We settled in at Richelle and Leo's and started planning our next moves.  Connie got to practice her music while I jumped online to research places to stay on airbnb, booking.com, and state and federal parks.



We started to knit together a journey by land that would take us all the way to San Antonio.  Leo made us a giant frittata each morning, we'd do some hiking in the desert in the afternoon, then have a fantastic dinner at home. I started learning the different cactus species and began to appreciate the variety of the desert landscape.  We saw a squadron of javelinas (peccary) one evening on our way back from the hot tub, then the next day saw a wild bobcat at the Sweetwater Wetlands. Richelle had a few bird feeders on the back porch for the doves, humming birds, wrens, quail, and finches.

Leo, Richelle, and Scott at the Wildlife Rescue Center

Fish Hook Cactus

On a two night road trip to Bisbee we toured the Queen Mine and walked the scenic old town, stopping one evening at the Copper Queen Hotel where we found an ad hoc group of local musicians rocking the bar.  Connie helped out on vocals on Sloop John B, I think.   It rained like crazy and our little airbnb house sprung a leak in Leo's bedroom.

We spelunked the Kartchner Caverns and walked the muddy paths at the Whitewater Wash birding area. In the desert, where the road and paths are dirt, a hard rain turns those byways into an impassable morass until the sun dries them out. We came back from the Wash with big pancakes of mud on our boots and the vehicle covered in grey mud.  Taking the long way back through the historic community of Tubac, we completed our circuit back to Tucson.

Touring the Queen Mine

I jumped on Craigslist and started combing through the ads for pop up tent trailers, learning as I went just what features we might need and the specifications of the various models. I found that an older, small trailer would match up with the weight and horsepower of our little Ford Ranger.  However, the older models often did not have a working refrigerator or heater.  We narrowed the search down to three ads that looked good then made the 100 mile trek to Phoenix to go see them. I'm sorry to say that many people who are selling on craigslist are just plain lame.  Does the refrigerator work?  I think so.. not sure... haven't used it in five years.  We drove up here to see your rig.  When can we come by?  Oh, you are busy.  That's too bad.  Do you know how to light the stove? No?  Is it in good shape?  Yes... then how about this tear in the canvas.. and why doesn't the sink pump work?

In Phoenix, we found one person who actually put effort into selling his little rig.  He met us when he said he would, showed us everything right and wrong with the thing, then he fixed what was not working.  We bartered a bit, I asked for the 10% senior discount, we made the deal, and drove off with our new/used pop up tent trailer. $2250, can't beat that! The camper is a 2000 Coleman Fleetwood Tacoma and weighs 1918 pounds empty.  Because it had been sitting for a while, the deep cycle battery would not hold a charge but other than that, everything was in working order.  While the bumper hitch on the Ranger would handle the load, a safer, long term, option was to get a frame mounted hitch which we did along with a new battery.  Next on Connie's agenda was to do a deep clean, taking things apart and scrubbing every square inch of the rig.  Now we were ready to roll.  For Thanksgiving we had a fantastic turkey mole as a sendoff from Leo and Richelle, then we spent the next day packing.

Our stay in Tucson was everything we wanted and needed.  The plan came together there as we had plenty of time to do our research, plenty of time for Connie to do her music, and plenty of time to just enjoy our friends' company and the refreshing climate of southern Arizona in the winter.