Ramblin' On...

After two weeks in Tucson, our longest stay in any one location, we’re on the move again. We both appreciated a change from the frenzied pace we’d been keeping, soaked up the warm Tucson sun (not unlike the warm Tuscan sun of last April in Italy) and got to know the Arizona desert a little. Neither of us had experienced much desert before Big Bend National Park in Texas, and Tucson gave us an even further opportunity to appreciate it. An added bonus was the unusual and human-like Saguaro cacti, which are abundant in the Tucson area. You can almost imagine them coming to life after dark and chasing each other around under the desert moon.

We met up with several Long Island NY friends after Christmas (some permanent Tucson residents, some occasional) and visited a number of Tucson museums (including the Arizona State Museum, which had a fascinating exhibit on the history of area Indian tribes - there were/are LOTS of different tribes in the US, despite our shameful attempts to eradicate them). We made our way to the top of snow-covered Mt. Lemmon in the Coronado National Forest and realized that sunbathing in the morning and skiing in the afternoon is a viable option if you live in Tucson. On New Year’s Eve we behaved like good senior citizens and were in bed by 10:30, turning the lights out at 12:01 despite the lure of an intriguing “First Night” program in downtown Tucson. Maybe we’ll come back to life in our 60’s and be fun again.

Our final days in Tucson involved more desert and canyon views and a trip to the TitanMissile Museum, the sole remnant of the Cold War program, which had fifty-four missile silos, each prepared to deliver a nine-megaton thermonuclear hydrogen bomb (700 times Hiroshima) to its assigned target in thirty minutes or less, with only one minute’s notice. A chilling thought, all in the name of deterrence (?). It was eerie to look down into the underground shaft and see this (formerly) deadly device poised to kill, just as it had always been since its original construction in the 60’s. Fortunately, none were ever fired in anger or by accident.

We were sad to leave Tucson, having enjoyed the constancy of being in one place for many days. It’s a little upending to always be on the go, as you never get a chance to feel “at home” in any one place for long, but we began to feel at home in Tucson. We had thought of Tucson as a possible place to settle one day for the “winter” months, but it felt like Tucson may be too sprawling and too congested for our tastes. Like Yogi Berra might have said, “Nobody wants to go there anymore because it’s too crowded”. Having lived on a quiet island in Maine, it may be hard for us to find a place that we can be happy in for the winter that won’t feel “too crowded“.

We arrived back in the Phoenix area today, a short 2-hour drive from Tucson, and settled in at a “55 and older” RV community called Valle del Oro in Mesa AZ. One in a chain of seven parks in the area, it has 1,760 tightly packed sites, a full-time recreation director, fruit & palm trees, game rooms, community center, fitness center, batting cage, pool, spa, restaurant, library, post office and beauty salon, along with the usual shuffleboard and bingo rooms. Yikes! Is this where we’re destined to end up spending our winters? It’s a world we kinda knew existed, but usually only in the movies or on Seinfeld. While it will only be a base of operation for a couple of days while we explore the area, we are probably in for an eye-opening experience on our “campus.” Stay tuned for updates.

Happy New Year to all. Hope you’re enjoying our photos on Picasa. We’re doin’ it… Bob