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| Dogs enjoy their walks in their "doggyride" |
We stayed here 2 weeks. We reserved a 100 foot pull through and it worked well, but the sites are very narrow so the three nights we had someone in the site next to us, it was a little tight. Next time here, we will definitely book a back in site that is shorter, but wider.
We really enjoyed all the people we met. We attended a Rock 'n' Roll (1950s/60s) concert by buying tickets off a bulletin board so we got discounted seats but great ones - 2nd row and Center. The park was very secure and we took lots of walks as the weather averaged about 75 degrees while we were here, with very little rain.
The first week we did not get as much sightseeing in as we had planned as we were up three different nights about every 2-3 hours with "the girls". First night was Kyna, second night Lexie and third night both of them had diarrhea. No changes of food except for one chew bone (which we immediately returned), but after about a 4-5 day period of dealing with this we took them to a vet and she gave us some probiotic and antibiotics, thinking they had a bacteria and developed a mild case of colitis. They are getting better, but not totally over it.
We did enjoy the following locations.
Saguaro National Park - we went to the East park - Rincon Mountain District. I didn't realize it, but they have both a west and east park. The Saguaro cactus does not bloom until April timeframe so we'll have to do another trip to see that, but we did enjoy the wildflowers and other cacti that were blooming.
We also heard about The Mini Time Machine - Museum of Miniatures. They were having a traveling exhibit of "Diamonds are Forever" which had world famous diamonds and the people who owned them. The detail of the various exhibits was absolutely amazing. Again, the museum is hard to capture via pictures, taken without flash, but these will give you a little sample of the detail of the work. We were not thinking this was something we would enjoy as we were expecting doll houses, but after numerous people recommended it we went and it was pretty amazing. The collection contains over 300 miniature houses and room boxes in three main galleries with over 10,000 square feet of exhibit space. They cover many different countries and spans of history with their exhibits.
On Saturday, we met up with friends that we met on our first trip out to Gillette, Wyoming after we retired. They were from Texas but shortly after we retired, they also retired, put their home on the market and are now enjoying traveling and life in their motorhome.
On Sunday we left the motorhome early and headed to the Desert Museum. What a great way to view the desert life - vegetation and animals. We were glad we went early as it was 82 when we left the park around 2:00. This Desert Museum is rated within the top 5 of the US.
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| Coati - similar to raccoon. |
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| Hummingbird building nest. |
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| Feeding baby. |
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| Mama Hummingbird sitting on nest. |
On Monday we visited the Pima Air and Space Museum. This museum is a private museum and is the third largest in the US. They have over 300 planes in the museum covering about 100 years of aviation to include space. We took all their tours except the boneyard tour that is housed on the airfare base nearby, where they house 4,000 planes that are being restored or recycled. Driving near the airforce base, for miles on both sides of the highway you could see the boneyard. Truly an amazing site - of course Craig could just see the dollar signs!!!
Our last full day in Tucson, we took the motorcycle up the scenic drive up Mt Lemmon to the community of Summerhaven, climbing about 6,000 feet in elevation. This was a beautiful drive and we didn't get too many good pictures from the bike. Once we got to Summerhaven, we noticed all the buildings were very new, so we asked if this was a new community or if they had a fire. In 2003, they had a fire where they lost over 300 structures and many of them did not have the resources to rebuild.
When we started the climb, we were in desert type climate with the Saguaros, then we climbed to grasslands, then very rocky and finally at the top, we were in pines and firs.
We'll come back to Tucson at some point as there were many things around the area we would like to see. Some communities outside of Tucson that we did not get too, were Tubac, Patagonia, Elgin and Presidio. We also would like to see Kartchner Caves and Colossal Cave Park, along with many sites in Tucson. Our friends told us about the BOGO discount book, so the few sites we did see, we were able to save money, but this is a great discount book and a way to see many of the sites with buy one, get one free discounts.
On Wednesday, we moved onto Sun City, northwest of Phoenix.
