Tucson

Bob was still not up to par, but he drove all the way to Tucson when we left Boomerville. We pulled into Davis Monthan Air Force Base FamCamp not long after the office closed. Not to bother, we wanted an overflow site anyway. Bob wants to see how long we can go without electric hook-ups.  It had been a few years since we visited Tucson. The FamCamp has changed--what used to be the overflow lot is now full hook-up sites and the overflow is back behind the main campground. We found a site to our liking, but before parking we emptied our tanks and filled with fresh water.

 There are a lot of things to see and do in the Tucson area. This trip we decided to visit Sabino Canyon. For some reason we never visited this section of
Coronado National Forest on our previous visits.Even though it was Saturday, we decided to brave the crowds and go for a short hike. We chose Esperero Trail. It was a pretty level trail that took us to the first tram stop.

We enjoyed seeing the saguaro cacti. They come in all shapes and sizes and they are everywhere in the lower canyon area.

From the tram stop we walked down the paved road back to the parking area. It was amazing how many people were just walking on the road and not on the trails.

We took a trail to get off the road and saw this roadrunner chasing a lizard. He sure blends in with the branches.

Super Bowl Sunday we decided to add to our geocache totals. We started with a series of park and grabs along a frontage road east of Tucson. From there we drove into the desert to find a few 'turtle' caches. The caches were placed in the shape of a turtle. According to geocache rules, each cache has to one tenth of a mile from any other cache. We found all the caches in the turtle's head.

On our way home we stopped at Pizza Hut and got a pizza to go. You have to have pizza to watch the Super Bowl. I have to say that we were disappointed in this year's commercials.

Monday we headed to the eastern park of Saguaro National Park. We enjoyed walking through the desert seeing all the different cacti. This is a barrel cactus.

This is an up close view of the yellow buds.

This is what a saguaro skeleton looks like.

One of our hikes at Saguaro National Park took us to the lime kilns where it took 20 cords of wood to make one batch of lime.

This saguaro is getting nubbins for its soon to be arms. It is being protected by a palo verde tree.

In addition to saguaros, there are many different cholla cacti. This red one had rope like segments.

This cholla had stalks as thin as pencils with red buds on the ends.

 Tuesday we went back to Sabino Canyon and hiked to the dam, then took the Phone Trail Connector to Phone Trail and back down to the visitor center. This trail was much steeper than the one we took on Saturday.

 At one point we had to cross a creek. We crossed at a much narrower part than this!

 We enjoyed our hikes at Sabino Canyon. We didn't do them all, so when we return to Tucson we still have some trails to hike.

Back at the RV we had a hummingbird that hovered around one of the trees most of the day. It stayed so still that we were able to get a picture of it before we left.

We enjoyed our time at Tucson, but according to weather reports a COLD front was moving in for the next weekend. After doing laundry and stocking up at the commissary we left Tucson on Wednesday. When we left we had been without hook-ups 68 nights. For those budget minded readers, we are  $54.96 a day.