Are we homeless now?
Eddie, what?
Are we homeless now?
Firstly, no we are not homeless, and secondly you’ve had a roof over your head everyday. You can stop worrying.
Oh. Okay.
We arrived in Tucson at about 4 PM and unpacked our belongings in our lovely Airbnb. We stayed in this same place two years ago when we last visited Tucson, and we really enjoy it. After unpacking, we looked up local restaurants and settled on an Italian place called Caruso’s. It is very old school, and the food was really good. The highlight, however, was Nathan, our food server. He was perfect and gave us great advice about the menu. He is also really friendly, and we chatted as much as we could given the fact we were not his only table! Back to the Airbnb and to bed as we have breakfast with a longtime friend tomorrow.
Hey, I remember this place! There are lizards to chase and birds to listen to in my great back yard! I like it here. It’s a good feeling to be back here.
Up and off to breakfast with our friend Louis. Louis introduced us to each other about 38 years ago. And from that introduction, as they say, the rest is herstory. We had a great breakfast at “First Watch” and then went over to visit the church where Louis is the Pastor. The chapel is very pretty and well designed. We could imagine Louis up at the pulpit every Sunday leading his flock. We also visited his office which is filled with books and the numerous awards he’s earned from his good works. We had a wonderfully engaging and wide-ranging conversation touching on everything from theology to birth order behavior to the metaphysical. Louis says he isn’t terribly good at people “ing” but you couldn’t tell that by us. We so enjoyed our time together we arranged to meet the next morning for breakfast. Score! We made our way back to the Airbnb to let Eddie out to get some exercise.
Good feeling gone. They put me in that crate again. Veal. Someone report them!
We had dinner reservations at Sullivan’s Steakhouse in the evening. They are a dog friendly restaurant so after brushing Eddie out, the three of us headed off to Sullivan’s. Thank goodness the misters were on because it was still in the high 90s at 6 PM. Our luck with food this trip held, and Michelle’s steak and Sandy’s crab cakes were incredible – however, the east coast oysters on the half shell did not hold a candle to gulf oysters. We may be ruined for other oysters until the memory of our New Orleans oysters fades.
Tucson rocks! LOTS of people want to love on me and see me do tricks. I made new friends at Sulivan’s. My martini was very refreshing.
The next morning, we met Louis at a diner called Bobo’s Restaurant and Coffee House. We had omelets, bacon and eggs and shared a gigantic blueberry pancake that was as delicious as it was big. Again the conversation flowed like water and before we knew it, nearly two hours had passed and we were holding up the table so we reluctantly parted ways until the next time we meet up. We hope Louis will be able to visit us in the Coachella Valley sometime in the future.
One downside to our Airbnb, the WIFI is very sporadic and pretty weak bordering on dead. Our host was aware of the problem and was trying to get it fixed but in the meantime, working on the blog finds us in a local Starbucks. Yes, we are those people now. We still couldn’t get much of a signal, so we eventually resorted to using our phones as hotspots. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Dinner broke our streak of fantastic food. We picked a place because it was dog friendly but it turned out to be a disappointment. The pet-friendly “patio” turned out to be a loud garage behind the restaurant with smokers at a bar sharing the space with “diners”. The food was very mediocre at best, and we declined the “no-name” wine. When a food server can’t tell you the winery’s name it is best to take a pass. The one redeeming quality of the restaurant was its name, “Bison Witches”. We never did find out the origin of the name, but they certainly get points on originality.
Hey, but I liked it! Lots of people stopped to adore and pet me and I got all the treats that fell through that holely table Moms were at. SCORE!
The next morning, we were up early so we could arrive at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum at opening time since the weather was predicting another scorcher of a day. Sandy went to the museum many, many years ago and was eager to return. Michelle had never been and was excited to finally see it after Sandy’s descriptions of it. Neither of us were disappointed. The museum and park reminded us of the Living Desert in the Coachella Valley, and we loved seeing the mountain lion and other desert creatures in the outdoor portion of the museum. We met Sally, a docent at the Sonorasaurs exhibit. The skeleton of a newly discovery species of dinosaur was discovered outside of Tucson in 1994, extracted in 1995 – 1999, and reassembled and displayed at the museum. Sally told us all about the discovery and we chatted for quite a while until duty called her back to her docent tasks. We also talked to a docent about turtles and tortoises and Sandy reminisced about the desert tortoise she once had, Codger. After 3 hours of happy wandering, we decided to go to the Saguaro National Park as it was right next to the museum. The park is almost 77,000 acres and it home to the nation’s largest cacti. The Saguaros are beautiful and spread out for as far as the eye can see once you are inside the park. We went to the visitor center and stamped our National Park passport book and got a couple of postcards and a magnet. We then drove through the park and enjoyed its splendor. We decided to stop for a late lunch in northern Tucson before returning home and picked a restaurant named Wildflower. Our dining experience could not have been more different than the disappointing meal of the night before. Sandy had a lovely charred shrimp and black rice dish that was so delicious she is going to try and recreate it back home in the Coachella Valley. Michelle had a fantastic pounded pork cutlet that riveled the Schnitzel at Johanna’s in Palm Springs. Afterwards, we headed back to the Airbnb to start to pack up and get ready for the drive back home. With all of our amazing wanderings, there really is no place like home.
We are turtles again, I can tell! My toys, food and crate (hateful crate) get packed up and put into the car.
”On the Road Again …”
There will be one more blog for this journey to wrap up our trip. It will be out in the next few days. Until then, enjoy!
