Day 13 & 14, 31March & 1April 2024 - Easter in Tucson, Old Friend and New Friends

We spent Easter Sunday with our friends in Tucson. We got up early and went to 07:30 Easter Mass with Brian and Jane, it was very nice. 

Brian and Jane were hosting Easter dinner at their place, 14 people including us, we were crashing their party.  

It was threatening rain but June and I wanted to visit Saguaro National Park which is just a few miles down the road from Brian's. It was a cool day but we took the scooter since it makes it easy to park. 

The Visitor Center was busy for Easter Sunday and there was a line at the gate but once in the park it was not crowded. 

We drove the 8 mile scenic loop, it was interesting that the temperature in the park was considerably cooler.

The park has a very diverse eco system including some very pretty cacti.

The Saguaro Cactus can be huge.

We took a short hike called, Loma Verde. It was only 0.3 miles but it went from desert and Cactus forest on one side of a dry creek to green grass and Mesquite Trees on the other. 

We could have spent more time in the park but rain was on the horizon, we made it back to Brian's just as it was beginning to sprinkle, we were a bit chilled but dry. 

Brian and Jane are fun people.

Brian and Jane are excellent cooks, the meal was just awesome and we got to meet a bunch of their friends that were all very nice. 

Everyone had a nice time and we were grateful to be included. 

Monday we plan to visit other friends from Vermont that now live in this area. 

- Monday, April Fool's Day.

We got up Monday to Rain.  We had been communicating with some other friends that live in Patagonia, AZ and made plans to go have lunch with them. 

It is only an hour drive from Tucson to Patagonia, what a nice little town. We met Marc and Peggy at their house which they recently had built.  They moved from Vermont two years ago. They are world travelers but made Vermont home base before this move. 

I had a brain fart coming into their driveway and failed to navigate a bump in their driveway correctly and bent our retractable step pretty badly. For reasons I have not determined yet, the step failed to retract when we left Brian's so it was down.  Anyway, compost happens. We were headed to lunch; I decided to deal with it after we returned.

We went down town with Marc and Peggy and browsed the local craft store which is owned by Peggy's sister and husband. It is a very cool place and even Marc and Peggy have a little corner where they sell things they have collected from all over the world. They use the proceeds to help fund a local wildlife organization. 

We had a very nice lunch at the cafe next door, the Gathering Grounds, and then returned to their home. 

It took me an hour to pull and hammer the step back to a position where it could be retracted. The electric retract motor is not responding, I assume it blew a fuse. I strapped it in the up position and will deal with that when it is not raining. 

We had a nice visit with Marc and Peggy, we were very glad we stopped to see them.  

We drove back to Brian's, again in the rain and it was still raining when we arrived. I decided the loading of the bikes and scooter can wait until tomorrow, it is not supposed to be raining in the morning. 

After Jane got home from work (poor girl), we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, La Herradura, in Tucson, it was excellent; as were the margheritas!

It has been a nice visit, but we may not be welcome again, when we visited Brian in 2012 in Sedona, we brought snow, this time we brought rain....I guess Vermont weather comes with us. 

We will depart tomorrow and head for New Mexico. We have been trying unsuccessfully for the last few days to get entrance into Carlsbad Caverns for Wednesday.  We are going to drive that way, if we can't get in, we will just keep making our way to Texas.