Life in Tuscan

We were in Tucson to get the annual maintenance done on the motorhome.  The bad news is that it costs a lot of money.  The good news is that we got to stay in Freightliner's full hook-up sites for free while we were exploring the city.  Considering the price of the maintenance service, that was the world's most expensive "free" camping site!  We were joined by several other motorhomes enjoying their "free" site while awaiting service after the weekend.

We found Tucson to be a city of bicyclers.  They were every where!  There were even some interesting cautionary biking signs in the national park.  This is probably a good reason for us not to ride our bikes there.



But we did some bike riding on Sunday afternoon.  After going to church, we decided that we were too close to the University of Arizona to drive all the way back to the motorhome to change clothes.  So we made a fast stop at Walmart to buy some new shorts for a bike ride.  Mark's entire wardrobe is getting baggy, so he deserved a new pair of shorts.  This is the first time he's bought anything with a 32-inch waist in many years.

So we headed to the University of Arizona and rode the bike trails around campus.  There is a major roadway that divides the two sections of campus, so there are several tunnels for walkers and bikers that connect the two areas. It must be close to graduation, because there were lots of students dressed in academic regalia being photographed in picturesque areas this beautiful Sunday afternoon.  The campus is a nice blend of desert and palm trees, and this is a picture of "Old Main" at the center of the university. 

We've been visiting university campuses for many years with our two sons.  Their favorite stops were always the football stadiums.  So this University of Arizona stadium picture is for Luke and Blake.

But the best find on campus came at the end of our bike ride.  In all our hiking in the desert, we have seen hundreds of dried up century plant stalks and several stalks just emerging from the agave plant.  Denisa had sadly realized she wouldn't get to see one in bloom.  But in our bike ride on the university campus, we found one in glorious bloom!  The stalk was almost 20 feet tall, and is truly a very rare thing to see.  We can now leave the desert happy!

After all our time gawking at Saguaro cacti, we hadn't made it to downtown Tucson.  So we downloaded a pdf with a map and descriptions of 23 different buildings.  Denisa is checking out a statue that was item number four on the list.  Check out the turquoise line painted on the sidewalk.  We followed that line on Sunday evening to walk the 2.5 mile trail around the historic sites downtown.  That line made it easy to find the next item on the list.  Good job Tucson!

We also liked the county court house downtown.  This mosaic dome building was as pretty as those old Texas courthouses.

We spent three full days in Tucson.  After paying for our "free" camping site, we were looking for cheap sight-seeing possibilities.  With our national park pass, we didn't spend any money on entertainment.  We're finding plenty of things to see and do for free!