Tucson - Rincon Country West

We have spent every winter at Rincon Country West starting in 2008. We're pretty happy here, but I know this park would not be to everyone's liking.
It's a 55+ park.  About a third to a half of the pads have park models on them.  One of the downsides to being in a 55+ park is that one is constantly reminded of one's mortality.  From year to year we see people decline, or worse, not return.  On the bright side, there are no annoying youngsters.  So, that's something to consider. 
Tucson is a great place to winter.  There are places to hike.  Riding on the road is much safer here than many other places we have been.  The city of Tucson passed an ordinance that all new road construction or repaving must install a bike lane.  There are also miles of bike paths that are physically separated from cars.

This is the road in and out of the park.  I took this on a really windy day.  You can see palm tree bits on the ground.

Almost everybody is gone, so I don't have a good picture of RVs on their sites.  Look over toward the two white ones.  You can see that there is a place for the vehicle, a concrete pad for the picnic table, and then the RV.  Rinse repeat.  When we had the fifth wheel we moved gravel to level.  A board was too much, but it needed something.  Sites are slightly sloped for drainage.

This was taken standing behind our bus, I'm next to our ladder.  When it's full, you're pretty close to your neighbors.  With about 5 exceptions, the RV sites are staggered so that if you have a rear window, you do not look in to the window of the fifth wheel behind you.  You will look at someone's toad.

The pool is on the right here.  They have water aerobics twice in the mornings.  There is a DVD telling the participants what to do.

The main activity complex.

If you are interested, there is a woodshop (with a lot of equipment), lapidary, sewing, two hiking clubs, Hardanger,  two small gyms, bridge and many other card games, and places to congregate and talk.  There is also a post office on-site.  There is a biking club that does rides in the 10-12 mph range, with no one left behind.  There are many activities every day.  If you like to do stuff with people, there is stuff to do. 
Bands are brought in and other entertainment.  There are food trucks during the season as well as a small farmer's market.
For some reason, we do none of these things, so I can't comment on what they're like.  We've made good friends in the park who ride, and we spend a fair amount of time with them.
There are multiple laundry and shower facilities and they are all good, too.  The park offers wi-fi, but I strongly suggest you bring your own.  It just doesn't work. The office staff is very friendly and very nice. 
We like the park because we like Tucson.

Boat Racing and Dust Devils

There was racing on the lake at Christopher Columbus park this morning.  This is a starting lap, they haven't picked up enough speed yet to make the rooster tails.  I'm not sure where I was pointing the camera, but I did not capture any of those.  Anyway, this was a multi-club race.

People were here with their campers and pop-ups.

There was a small village lake side.

These are vendors.  In the back is Insaneboats.com.  I had no idea that RC hydroplanes were this big.  If you look left, lower half there is a boat sitting on a stand.  They look just like the real ones.  Jim went down and talked to one of the boat guys, he said the sport started using weed eater engines.  Then people started manufacturing engines for the boats.  The next new thing will be electric motors.

We had to continue on our way, we still had CDO to climb in a rather stiff headwind.  It was gruesome. 
This afternoon we went to Target and Trader Joe's.  While we were out we saw several dust devils form and grow up.  Upon returning, we found that a devil had been across our patio.  The mountain bikes were pushed over, the bike stands were out from under the cinder blocks we had weighting them down.  When we put the pipe wrap on the corners of the cinder blocks I thought maybe it was over kill, but it saved the paint today.  So now the mountain bikes are up on the hitch mounted bike rack with the grill cover over them until it settles down a little bit.
Tomorrow we're getting the truck washed, clayed and waxed.  It will be as smooth as a baby's butt.  We're in the final count down of stuff to do before pushing off into the great wide open.

Day Trip to Patagonia

Marco and his crew arrived at 9:00 this morning to wash and wax the bus.  If there was ever a thing worth paying for, it is that.  I don't mind helping wash the bus in Seattle because the water doesn't spot.  Here, if you don't get it dry in 15 seconds, it spots, big time.  So we needed to go somewhere.  It was too windy to ride.  How windy was it?  It was so windy that the Thunderbirds' demonstration at today's air show at Davis-Monthan was cancelled.
I've been following Emily's excellent blog, Traveling Twosome,  as they have spent a month hiking, biking and birding in Patagonia.  It's a very small town about 70 minutes south of Tucson, population less than 900 people.  The arrival of the New Mexico and Arizona Railway put Patagonia on the map.  With the presence of rail, the miners and ranchers were able to more easily ship their products and prosper.  The trains stopped coming in 1962.  There is still ranching, we did see cows, but I don't know how important it is to the economy.  The town itself has reinvented as a tourist destination.  The temperatures are pleasant there.  We saw a lot of people on road bikes today, even in the howling winds.
We had lunch at Common Grounds.  It was good.  Jim had the best restaurant potato salad ever.  We both had BLTs (bacon!) and enjoyed them. 

There is a Pilates studio, there is yoga, and there are wellness spas.  You have to wonder what the old time ranchers think about all of that.

A saloon established in 1937.

We're not sure what this is.  There is a sign in the window that says "Simply bed, no bread."  A rental, perhaps?

This is the old train station.  I love it when a place like this is preserved.

Then we drove out toward the Harshaw Cemetery.  This is kind of a cool old tree.

The last person was buried here in 2001.  The local historical society maintains the graveyard.

Why are old cemeteries so often on hills?

Old gravesites, really old.

This is what's left of Harshaw.  

We saw this burro in a field with cows.  He's really short.

This was also seen on the road returning from the cemetery.  This is out in the middle of nowhere.  What IS this?  At first I thought it might be the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, but I don't think it is.  None of the pictures on their website show anything like this.  Click on the Tree of Life website and check out their package prices.  They do a lot of fasting at the spa.  Basically you go to this place and starve. Meals do not seem to be included in the base price.

There are many forest roads in the area that are maintained and that travel through some nice scenery.  We're thinking we might take the bus down for a week or so next April and spend some time riding and looking at stuff.  We found an RV park that has full hookups and can accommodate our length.  
Tomorrow is forecast to be less windy than today, so hopefully we can be up and out early on the bikes.  The air conditioning was running by 9 this morning.  Hot!

Earth Moving, Stuck Trucks and New Shoes

Greetings Earthlings!  Long time, no write.  I will now catch you up on the glory that is full timing in hot climates.  Wednesday we had to be up at oh:dark:thirty to take the bus in for the annual oil change.  We also needed a new air filter which was surprisingly expensive.  On the way out of the RV park, following in the truck I stopped to get a picture of a Trichocereus in bloom.  Of all of the blooming cacti, this is the best.  How does such a beautiful flower come from this?

 

Yesterday we were up and out early on the bikes.  We stopped at the bridge overlooking the construction site in the Santa Cruz River bed.  All of this is in preparation for a bike path.  I would really like someone from the Army Corps of Engineers to explain this to me.  Look at the center of the picture (click to enlarge).  See the fence next to the vehicles.  They are digging down into the river bed.  This is after moving the bank back about 100 feet.

This is off to the right.  They're moving that bank as well.

The whole thing looks like a massively over sized project to the untrained eye.  I get armoring the banks, but I am at a loss to understand why the earth moving is of this magnitude.  This project really needs a web site.  There's never anyone around that I can ask about their thought process.

Today's ride had much entertainment value.  We went north on the Santa Cruz trail toward Sunset. When we crossed the last little bridge just before Camino del Cerro, we saw this on the right.  There was a giant wrecker with very long cables pulling this vehicle out of the water.  We watched it for a few minutes, and another rider came by and said there were two more just up the trail. 

We rode up to the bridge that parallels Camino del Cerro and found the other two. This is the same body of water the wrecker is pulling the blue car out of.  Yes, I know I ended that sentence with a preposition.

How does this happen?  I don't even know how you would drive to this place.  The vanity plates on the truck say "ONCALLS."  He will not be taking calls for awhile.

Then, in the desert near the left bank of the little river, we see this.  His left wheels are in sand up to his hubs.

Naturally we had to go back and gawk at the wrecker.  Two young guys drove their old Jeep Cherokee into the water and could not back out.  One wonders if alcohol was involved.

When he opened the door, water came pouring out of the front of the passenger compartment.  Apparently the owner was amused because he let out a couple of excited whoops.  However, excitement turned to sadness when the engine would not start.  The wrecker was forced to come back and get him out of the wash.  This will probably be very expensive towing.

Look at the ground squirrel bottom right.  Is he not adorable?  They're like rabbits, they think if they don't move you can't see them.

In news of the feet, I can say that I have a new shoe paradigm.  After foot surgery, my left foot rejected my La Sportiva Imogens that I had been wearing for five years.  I had five pairs of them, because my feet previously liked that shoe.  Apparently they have switched their allegiance to the Ultra Raptors.  This makes sense to me because La Sportiva recently discontinued that shoe.  So, I'm good for two years, anyway.

This is a new good thing.  Superfeet makes insoles that my feet will accept.  The copper insole has memory foam.  So, for all of you with cursed feet, check them out.  I'm liking them more than my custom orthotics, and I really like the fact that they are machine made with very little variability.  Custom orthotics work sometimes, and sometimes they don't.

Currently it is 93 degrees outside.  The humidity in the bus is 4% due to the continuous running of the air conditioners.  We're leaving the 19th and it will not be a second too soon.  It's HOT!

April Whining and Crock Pots

Oy!  My ennui knows no bounds.  Note to self - next year do not stay this late into April!!!!  In past years we've always taken a week and flown up to Seattle to see our vast fleet of medical professionals and to visit Jim's Mom.  This year we've slid the medical fleet to July and Jim's Mom is no longer with us.  Without that week break from April in Tucson, the days are weighing heavily on us.  It's hot, and it's windy. I've been reading Metamorphosis Road's account of their recent time in Sedona.  I think we're going to go there next year, and go where they went. 
We headed out to Fantasy Island this morning to try out my new back tire on my mountain bike.  It has deeper tread and I'm hoping that it will feel better in sand.  Anyway, when we arrived there were about 60 cars parked in the lot.  Generally if there are 6 cars in the lot we're surprised.  There was some sort of event going on with tents and many children and their parents.  So, we abandoned that plan; we'll try it again tomorrow when people have returned to work and school, where they belong. 
We ended up doing laundry, defrosting the freezer and doing plug adapter research.  Apparently the Czech Republic uses a plug adapter that we do not currently own.  Their outlets have a protruding ground pin, and the adapter must be able to accept that pin.  Ours do not.  I'm happy that we discovered this prior to leaving on the trip.
The sky has been interesting with all of the clouds being swept through because it is windy.

I do have a cooking tip.  We have a crock pot, but we quit using it because cleanup is kind of a pain in an RV.  Slow cooking produces a lot of liquid, and we don't want that in the gray tank.  You probably already know this, but I recently learned that one can buy crock pot liners.  Put it in, put the food in, cook.

They don't melt!  Pull food out of bag, let the crock cool awhile, tie the bag up with a twist tie, throw it away, and you're done.  I like this.

Other than this pitiful accounting of our pitiful ennui, I have not too much report.

Hiking in the Tucson Mountain Park

High winds dictated a hike today instead of the bike.  We went out to the Tucson Mountain Park and covered about four miles.  It was a gorgeous day.

The Buckhorn Chollas are in bloom.  We saw the red and yellow varieties.  So far we've seen no fuschia, which are my favorite color.  They're not so common.

 

The ocotillo are still lovely and plentiful.

 

 

On the trail back to the truck.

Is this not cheerful?  It's growing in the RV park.

Today's hike once again suggested that we really need to spend more time on our feet.  If we're going to walk all over Prague, more conditioning of the feet is going to be required.
The ranks continue to thin here.  We get a little melancholy this time of year.  Two more of our friends came by tonight to say good bye.  I'm thinking we have 19 more days before we go.  It'll be good to see something new.