March 27th - Picacho State Park and on to Royal Palms

Wednesday

Having pulled into Picacho State Park we found our site, a large flat site, but then when you are in the middle of the desert space is not really at a premium.

We spent all of Wednesday doing nothing but relaxing in the sunshine, with a short drive to the visitor centre and I had a short walk through the desert, checking out the local birds and the giant Seguaro. Very pleasant.

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Thursday 28th March

Time to move on, we want to make sure that Phoenix it self is not missed out of our itinery so we are returning to Royal Palms (where we finished our last trip) for a few days, mostly to take advantage of their pool.

We drove the 85 miles and arrived in time for a dip and then took up the invite to play bingo with the residents. 

Bingo

US bingo is different. they use a grid of 5 x 5 numbers (free in the middle), each column has a letter above Col 1  is 'B', col 2 is 'I'' etc. then the numbers are split into 15's which are distributed at random in each column, so col 1 can be 5 numbers from 1 - 15 in any order. So when they call it is a letter and a number.

I don't know if it was just this caller, but there were no number descriptions, like "two little ducks 22", "Two fat ladies 88". However as wit most bingo the people we were with were lovely and welcoming and there were home made cookies and coffee while we played. I felt really, really bad by scooping the rolloever jackpot, which had been standing for a few weeks, of $60!!!!! But again everybody seemed very happy for me to have won.

24th March - Tuscon Botanical Gardens

Sunday
A short drive along Grant takes us to the Tucson Botanical Gardens. We took a picnic and hoped for a pleasant day. we were not disappointed. The gardens are well laid out, though rather specializing in desert type plants. There were lots of succulents and cacti as well as a lot of aromatic plants and herbs.
Of most interest was the butterfly and orchid house. We spent a fair amount of time there trying to identify butterflies and take photos.

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We had our picnic in the shade of a grapefruit tree then explored some other areas. We stumbled across an landscape gardening competition, a bit like Chelsea Flower show, but only four local entrants, still it was interesting. The last area of note was what is termed a community garden, quite common in mexico, what was attractive was the prayer tree, on which people hang trinkets and icons as a prayer request. This had been simplified to small wooden hearts which had been decorated. It was a very peaceful area.#
Quite an enjoyable excursion.
I get hung up on taking nice pics, so here are some more.

Monday was designated a quiet day, we lazed around in the sun and then mid afternoon took off to the local Texas Roadhouse for our first steak of this trip! Very nice meal, then a quick waltz round Walmart, which happened to be next door.
Tuesday
Time to move on, having sucked Tucson dry of all its tourist adventure potential we are starting our drive West, not far, Picacho State Park is only 34 miles away, but is an isolated State Park in the middle of the Saguaro Desert, even if it is only a few miles from the Interstate 10 and a railway. We plan to try and chill out for a couple of days in the heat of the desert before moving on to see a bit more of Phoenix at the weekend.

March 23rd - 4Th Ave Street Market

Saturday
4th Avenue in downtown Tucson is famous for its semi annual street fair, which happens to be this weekend, so we felt that we had to go along and have a look.

 It was rather busy, but fun

A lone policeman controls where the crowd and the traffic cross

All the normal booths, but some lovely art/craft work for sale, all too pricey or untransportable for us, but we enjoyed the stroll and the looking.

An interesting 'Here's looking at you' peacock feather dress

Sally was rather taken with a number of clothes for the grandkids (sorry, nothing bought) and Terry nearly fell asleep in a Hawaiian hammock chair.

A pleasant day out overall.

March 22nd - San Xavier Mission

After visiting the Studio we figured that we had enough time to drive to the South of Tucson and stop by the old mission (by old we mean old). This mission was built in 1560 and is a beautiful example of Spanish church architecture, both inside and out. Unusually (for us with our limited expertise) the roof was made from a series vaulted domes, rather than the usual large rafters. It was very ornate inside and had many interesting icons and statues. As it as a couple of days before Palm Sunday the alter had a purple cloth and there were Easter Lilies around the church. We also walked through some of the other parts of the mission with its cactus gardens, which were very pretty. There were several pictures on the walls, one of them was of a native indian saint - Saint Keteri Tekatwitha, who lived in 1656-1680, but was only sanctified in 2012. There is some very interesting, and detailed, information about her and her way of life on Wiki.
A very pleasant afternoon.

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22nd - Old Tucson Studio

Friday we visited the Old Tucson Studio up in the mountains very near to the Desert Museum.
We arrived fairly early as there was not a cloud in the sky and it promised to be a hot day. The studio was built in 1939 for the film 'Arizona' and for various political and financial reasons was not removed, but other bits were added on. The studios became one of the larger cowboy film studios and even though a lot of it was lost in a fire in 1997 it still has an impressive number of recognizable film sets.
Following a brief orientation tour we set off to see the set of High Chapparal, which Sally remembers from her childhood, meanwhile just across from there is the adobe wall and ruin used to good effect in Rio Bravo.
We stopped in at the Crystal Saloon to see a music hall show, what appears to be a wooden saloon is in fact a steel constructed studio, with a saloon and stage inside it. We enjoyed the short show.
We now walked down Main Street, stopping at the Old Mission, which was used for a lot of films, notably the Three Amigos and Tombstone. While there we watched a demonstration of a restored 1830's gatling gun, very impressive as it fired its 40 rounds in about 5 seconds.
After going to the courthouse to see a short movie showing the many films made there we picnicked outside a saloon and then had a wander past the old mine and schoolhouse before deciding that we had seen enough.
An interesting place, though a little short on information.

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March 21 - Arizona Desert Museum

Thursday
Today we drove out from Tucson into the Sonora Desert to visit the Desert Museum.
A museum dedicated to the desert. Fortunately we took lunch with us as the visit took longer than we anticipated.
We followed the guided walk along its paved paths, visiting sections about the desert. It's geology, climate, minerals, animals, plants, birds, insects and, yes, fish!
The highlight was visiting the hummingbird enclosure, where we spent nearly an hour. It was lovely to see hummingbirds with their young, or sitting on their nest, or just bombing around finding nectar in flowers, or from the feeders. A great day that gave us a good insight into the Sonora Desert.

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The visit prompted me to put a couple of more specific blogs up, so just before this blog you can find:

• More Hummingbirds
• Flowers of The Desert 2
• Seguara Catus

These and all ourblogs are indexed by date in the list on the right hand side of this page

Flowers of the Desert 2

Our visit to the Arizona Desert Museum enabled us to see a variety of flowers that are found in the Sonora Desert. My practice in Sabino Canyon helped to get some more really nice photos.

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