A Longer Hike and Great Jazz

Saturday 2/4

Off to H F Coors this morning for their monthly seconds sale. Nancy was really pleased with what she found. She picked up a set of pasta bowls and a couple of other bowls for $2 and $3 apiece.

Traffic around town is getting pretty heavy as the Gem Show is starting this week. Police at a lot of intersections along with independent shows spread all around town.

Back home Nancy did some laundry and we just relaxed.

Sunday 2/5

Morning walk, then news programs. We each had a hot rocks massage from Angel and then watched the Super Bowl, which fortunately ended before the start of Downton Abby! Otherwise we would have missed the exciting end of the game. Pizza for dinner. Our new freezer means we can keep a couple of pizzas in stock instead of having to run to the store on Saturday or Sunday as we had been doing.

I have been working on cleaning off the decals on the trailer where the Red Max Pro bubbled due to moisture and yesterday I started reapplying sealer to those areas. Put a second coat on part of it today and it is looking good.

Monday 2/6

Morning RV Park meeting, then we went into Tucson to check out the “African Village” which is part of the rock and gem show - which really spreads all over the city with something like forty distinct locations, each one offering something just a little different. There are markets and shows for unsorted boxes of rocks, fossils, raw rocks, polished rocks, semi-precious, gem stones, beads, etc., etc. If it has any remote relationship to rocks you can find it on display or for sale somewhere in Tucson this week.

The “African Village” was featured in the Sunday paper and looked quite interesting, so we figured Monday morning would be the time with the least crowds - and we were right. There was a very interesting assortment of booths with African crafts. lots of carved figurines and masks, an amazing variety of beaded items, lots of beads and colored stones in bulk, clothing, baskets, etc. One very unique item was some very colorful and decorative baskets made of telephone wire! Really pretty works of art made from the tiny colored wires found in bundles of telephone wire!

Since we were downtown we stopped in at the Federal Building and picked up the IRS forms we needed. There was an ad from the shoe store Worldy Soles on Sunday that said they were going out f business! Bummer, we just found the place a couple of weeks ago. Everything is on sale so we decided that was as good an excuse as any to stop at Beyond Bread for lunch and check out the shoe store again, and lo & behold, Nancy found a nice pair of walking shoes for a great price!

There was another article in the newspaper this morning about the wildflowers, some of which are starting to bloom early, that predicted a spectacular wild flower bloom this spring due to the rain in December and the warm temps in January. This is predicted to be the best spring in five years and it will be even better if we get a little rain in February, which is predicted this week!

Since we have never seen the desert in bloom we have decided to forgo our planned trip to the Pacific NW for this year and stay here at least through the end of March. We can always do the NW next year, but the wildflowers are not that predictable. So we will be sitting tight for another eight to ten weeks. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that it is worth it. Nancy says that the first time she sees a snake in the laundry room we are hitting the road!

Tuesday 2/7

This morning on our walk we came across a real pretty little wildflower, so it is starting already.

A couple of interesting coincidences today. After our morning walk we drove over to the post office to pick up some stamps and mail the oil sample from the truck oil change. The lady in front of us was having a package weighed, the clerk asked the zip code it would be going to and she said “60134”! Hello, that’s our home zip code! Turns out that she was going to send the package to her sister in Geneva, and she was born there herself.

Further in the small world category, as we were leaving the post office Nancy suggested we try the donut shop a couple of doors down. As we were walking back to our car a lady came rushing out of the restaurant next door - it was Barbara Armbruster, our former yoga teacher from Geneva! Turns out she and her fiance (we did not even know she was getting married) are staying right nearby and they are in the process of buying a house less than five mile away from Desert Trails! We did not even know she was in the area.

After a stop at the hardware store to pick up a nylon spacer we came home and I repaired one of our long slide covers that had lost a support spacer in the center. No idea how, maybe caught on a tree or maybe just vibrated out. I had taken a picture and was getting ready to send it to the awning manufacturer to see about getting a new piece. Then I thought to look at the awning on the other slide which is the same length. All that was missing was a simple nylon spacer and a screw. An easy fix!

I also determined that my new storage arrangement makes it much simpler and less work to get our collapsable ladder out of the storage compartment.

This afternoon there was a memorial for Kyoko Wyatt, the wife of the campground owner who passed away about this time last year. They had a very nice gathering with a couple of chefs making sushi - Kyoko was Japanese.

This evening there was a performance by Arvel Bird, a young man who performs on the violin and flute. The people here speak very highly of his previous performances, so we decided to check it out. Guess our tastes don’t quite dovetail with the group here. The performance was OK, but didn’t do much for us, we left after the third song.

Wednesday 2/8

Nancy and Karen drove down to Tubac for the opening day of the Tubac Arts Festival this morning and I stayed home to clean house and dog sit with Margo.

Some people might ask what we like about Tucson besides the walking and hiking in the desert. This quote from the Arizona Daily Star of January 31, 1912 pretty much covers it: Mr. Edwin Merrian, 1st Asst. to the VP and General Solicitor of the Missouri-Pacific RR “One week in Tucson convinced me that this is the most glorious winter climate in the world, and I shall go no further in search of a winter resort. The azure skies, the beautiful moonlight nights, this warm and mild climate, have proved a great boon to me ...”. This from a man with a private RR car that he could take anywhere in the US!

One of the fellows in the park here makes home made “pastys”, chopped meat, potatoes and vegetables in a pie crust like pouch. He dropped a couple off this afternoon and we had them for dinner, really good.

This evening there was a meeting of the astronomy group that had as a guest an astronomer from Kitt Peak Observatory who gave a talk about the solar system. Even though it was, as he said, really aimed at fifth graders - we made a model solar system out of play dough - it was very interesting and a bit of fun.

Thursday 2/9

Tucson Yoga first thing in the morning and then a quick stop at Food Conspiracy to pick up a few essentials. Otherwise it was apparently pretty uneventful day as neither of us can remember anything else that we did! And I am only writing this on Saturday morning, really should write it every day!

Friday 2/10

We decided to take a bit longer walk in the desert this morning. We had found an on-line map of Tucson Mountain Park that showed the trails so we decided to see if we could make sense out of them (which we had been unable to do in the past). We went about two and a half miles, still not really sure of where we were, but we eventually figured out that one of the trails we took was not on the map and the other problem we had was the small scale of the map. When a mile is only a little more than an inch on the map it is hard to get your bearings when you are walking.

After our hike we went to Coyote Pause for brunch. Later in the afternoon a run to the grocery store was in the cards and then we just relaxed. Nancy went over to the dog run with Karen and Margo late in the afternoon.

This evening there was another excellent performance in the rec hall. The Ellington Band from the Tucson Jazz Institute, which consists of entirely high school kids. They gave a really great and enjoyable performance, especially nice for us since we are fans of big band music in general and Ellington in particular.