Arizona

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There is no wind today and only a few clouds. We got ready to go and then went over for our "free" breakfast. We were on the road at 8:00. Not far out of town, at about 8:30, there was a Border Patrol Inspection Station for the Westbound lanes that we were wondering about the other day. We were just waved on through. We traveled through flat plains with distant mountains. There were range cattle. The landscape was starting to look like Nevada. There were signs in several areas that said, "Dust Storms Possible" and "Zero Visibility Possible". We were especially glad that we didn't continue on through this area yesterday! As we travelled, Nancy read about Tucson in the guide book. We learned about the Tucson bed. "Tucson gained a certain notoriety as a stagestop. A stay in Tucson meant sleeping in the infamous Tucson bed, which the traveler made by sleeping on his stomach and covering himself with his back. Despite its no-frills reputation..." (This sounds like a Howard sense of humor, Val.) We began to see pecan orchards, grapes, walnut orchards, and taller bushes. Several long trains passed by with containers again. Nancy counted 112 cars. Each gondola car had two large containers stacked, or two small ones on the bottom and a large one on top. Imagine how many tractor trailers would be going down the road with the containers from just one train! It would be 100 to 200 trucks! Trains certainly do save our highways!
We both commented that it felt good to be "home" in the wide open spaces. We began to pass ocatillo cactus, which Nancy had read about and always wanted to see! We passed the exit for Tombstone and the OK Corral, where they still have a shootout every day for the tourists. There was a lot more traffic today than there was two days ago on I-10. We were told that many trucks and cars were taking I-10 to avoid the snow and storms on I-40 this week, after all, it did snow in Las Vegas! As we got closer to Tucson, Rich said, "The power lines are starting to fence in the sky." Tucson seems to have made a concerted effort to make the properties along the Interstate look clean and have a good appearance. There was no junk and no trash. There were beautiful freeway overpass bridges and paintings on the bridge support columns. There were even some large mosaics by one bridge on the support walls. Tucson had the feel of a nice city and it semed prosperous. Out of town again, we saw picked cotton fields, sorghum, and cattle. The subdivisions were the same color as the dirt so they were almost invisible along the road! Then, WOW! Saguaros! Nancy thought we would have to go into one of the national parks to see the saguaro cactus because they're protected, but , no! They're all over the place! We stopped for fuel and the diesel was $1.91! We never thought we'd see that again. From about thirty miles out of Phoenix, we could see the smog. You'd think with yesterday's wind, every shred of smog would be cleared out. Phoenix, home of Sun City and snowbirds and retirement communities. Nancy looked up RV parks and found a couple with over 1800 spaces! We're not stopping there! Interesting note - Phoenix has a University of Phoenix! We also saw a cell tower poorly disguised as a palm tree. We laughed a lot. There were lots of orange trees with orange oranges on them. The trees are use for landscaping the streets and the yards. It reminded us of the Los Angeles area when we lived there. There was also plenty of landscaping with saguaro. As we found our RV park, there was another glorious sunset. This park thought it was a snooty resort, but it was nothing compared to the one in Las Cruces. It wasn't even a lousy imitation. They didn't even have a person driving a golf cart to lead you to your spot!
We slept feeling happy we had a better bed than a Tucson bed!

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Photos

Rich
mesquite and cholla cactus

Nancy and Saguaro
twins

Comments

[T]

Hey sweeties! I think you should rename the photo 'twins' to 'tripletts'! It was great to hear your voices. T