Tucson and Picacho Peak

After leaving Benson, AZ, we stayed a week on the western side of Tucson followed by five days in Picacho Peak State Park. The RV park in Tucson was more of a mobile home park than an RV park and the site we had to park in was pretty tight. Dan is getting better and better at backing the beast into places and with only one restart, we slid in smoothly.

Tucson

We moved to Tucson before New Years with the hope of hooking up with Dan’s childhood friend, Dan Mingo, and his wife, Mary. We had a great breakfast with Dan on New Year’s Eve and made plans to help him setup a blind for some future bow hunting. When I say help, I mean we provided company while we hiked the 2 miles into the watering hole that he had scoped out. Luckily, Mary was able to join us as well and we had a great time catching up and enjoying the desert terrain southeast of Tucson. I brought my drone with me so I could get a picture of Dan’s setup and provide some flyby video as well. I hope to hear from Dan over the next couple weeks about the deer he was able to get from his awesome blind.

On Thursday, we drove around Tucson to locate the Ford dealership that Dan had an oil change appointment with for Saturday. The dealership was a block away from a nice movie theater, so it was time to see the new Star Wars movie. After the movie, we stopped by Borderlands Brewing Company before returning to the RV for the night. The German Chocolate Cake Porter was pretty good but not quite as good as it sounds.

Next to spending the day with Dan and Mary, the highlight of our stay in Tucson was the day we spent at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The museum was just 5 miles down the road from where we were staying and we thought we’d spend a couple of hours there before doing a hike in the Saguaro National Park just a few more miles down the road. We ended up spending over 6 hours at the museum.

The must see at this museum is the raptor free flight that is performed twice a day during this time of year. They release these trained raptors ranging from hawks and falcons to owls of various breeds. The birds are free to do what they want and they usually do what is expected since the trainers and volunteers are offering up food. They did tell us that sometimes, a bird will fly off for a day or two and on only one instance, a bird left for good.

During the demonstration, the birds will fly from one side of the crowd to the other at an extremely low altitude. On one occasion, one of the birds flew between us and its wing tips almost brushed our ears. It was above our shoulders but did not appear to be higher than our heads! Dan was able to get some nice photos with his 200-500mm zoom that he ran back to the truck to get prior to the 10:00AM show. In hindsight, that lens was a bit too much given how close these birds were to the audience. If we go back there again, the 70-200mm would be a better choice.

Picacho Peak State Park

We left Tucson for a 5 night stay in Picacho Peak State Park. We had stayed here last year and it was here that Dan and Dan reconnected for the first time since 1980. Hiking to the top of Picacho Peak requires pulling oneself up the steep rocks with the aid of cables that are anchored to the rock. Last year we hiked to the first such obstacle and called it quits. This year we went prepared with gloves and left the big camera behind. Some sections were a bit hairy but we both managed to make it to the top. The views were spectacular and the sense of accomplishment, particularly after getting back down and looking up to where we were, made it all worth it.

The next day, we took a drive to check out potential boondocking locations in the area. Given the size of our rig, we like to see just what these public lands that you can stay on for free look like and, more importantly, what the access roads are like. We found a couple promising locations. On our return trip (we did a big loop) we saw signs for Casa Grande Ruins National Monument and decided to stop and check it out. The ruins are not very large but what made the stop a highlight was the volunteer guide. He was a master story teller and a retired high school teacher. His presentation of the history of the ruins and how they came about and what may have happened to cause them to be abandoned was riveting. We don’t know if we would have enjoyed the stop as much with a different guide but we certainly got our money’s worth with this guide. Oh, by the way, this national monument went fee free a couple years ago so it doesn’t cost anything to visit.

After Picacho Peak was a two night stay in Buckeye, AZ to prepare for our two weeks in the desert at Quartzsite. This wouldn’t necessarily warrant a mention given that all we planned to do was grocery shopping and laundry but our daughter, Kristina, stopped by to turn it into a momentous stay. She arrived around noon and spent the remainder of the day with us. She lives in Scottsdale and we hope to see her several more times as we wait out the winter in and around Arizona.