Category: Retirement

When we lived in Virginia, we were relatively close to Shenandoah National Park, which I always referred to as SNP. Now that we live in Tucson, Arizona, we are very close to Saguaro National Park’s eastern unit, the Rincon Mountain District. I am really tempted to refer to that as SNP, too, but that just wouldn’t feel right. The National Park Service uses SAGU as an abbreviation, but I don’t really like that, so I am going to use SGNPe for the eastern unit and SGNPw for the western unit, the Tucson Mountain District.

If you’d like to see a map of the park districts, click here. If you follow that link and scroll down once you reach the destination page, you can see hiking maps from both districts.

The entrance to SGNPe is a quick four-mile drive from our house. SGNPw is about a 30-mile/40-minute drive on the opposite side of town from our house. I hike often at SGNPe. When it’s not crazy-hot here, that is. I have not done any hiking at SGNPw yet, but I plan to change that between now and the end of May 2025.

Today, a friend and I went to SGNPe for an easy four-mile hike. It’s a rare cloudy and rainy day here, but that’s okay. It still felt good to be out hiking through the desert. The cool weather was actually a plus. We were out there for a couple of hours and only experienced rain for about the last 30 minutes. The cloudy skies made for some interesting light.

Below are some of the images I captured to share here.

 

 

 

When I Googled “crested saguaro” I got an AI-generated overview, which I decided to share here:

A crested saguaro, also known as a cristate saguaro, is a rare form of the saguaro cactus that has an unusual fan-like crest at the top instead of the typical cylindrical arms. The crest can take on many shapes, including intricate ripples or brain-like formations.

Here are some things to know about crested saguaros:

Only about 1 in 200,000 saguaros grow a crest, and they usually start to develop a crest when they are around 60 to 80 years old.

The exact cause of the crest is unknown, but some theories include a genetic mutation, lightning strike, or freeze damage.

Even with a crest, crested saguaros can still produce flowers, fruits, and arms.

You can see crested saguaros at the Desert Botanical Gardens (Phoenix), the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (Tucson), the University of Arizona Campus (Tucson), and Saguaro National Park Tucson).

The Crested Saguaro Society documents and photographs crested saguaros. They have found about 2,200 crested saguaros in Arizona.

 

 

I hope you enjoyed the pics. I am already looking forward to my next hike.

There was a time when I used this blog sort of as a catalog of places we’ve been, things we have seen, family happenings, special trips, etc. And then I stopped blogging.

I miss my catalog. I also miss writing. So now I am going to attempt to start blogging again.

Hubby came across the below image on Reddit recently. It’s an old aerial view of Tucson’s Rattlesnake Bridge, which is very close to downtown. In case you are wondering, we live far east of downtown, about a 12-mile (19.3 km) or 20-minute drive.

According to the Wikipedia entry…

Rattlesnake Bridge…is a 280-foot (85 m)-long footbridge over Broadway Boulevard between Iron Horse Park and Aviation Bikeway. Designed for the use of pedestrians and cyclists, the crossing is also called Diamondback Bridge or Snake Bridge and looks like one of the area’s endemic rattlesnakes.An artist named Simon Donovan designed the bridge, which cost $2.5 million to build in 2002. The snake’s eyes originally lit up at night, and the south end of the bridge has a huge rattle that makes a sound as travelers exit. The interior of the bridge is lit at night.

We have visited the bridge in person a couple of times. By that I mean we actually stopped, parked, and walked up to the bridge for a closer look. As opposed to driving by, which I do frequently.

Our most-recent visit to the bridge was in April 2023 when our friend Yves visited from Belgium. It’s always more fun doing this sort of thing when friends are in town.

 

 

 

 

After that, we went to Sentinel Peak, aka “A” Mountain, for a view of Tuscon’s downtown.

From A Mountain, you can see across Tucson from the southwest. The Catalina Mountains, background of image on the left, are north of the city and the Rincon Mountains, background of image on the far right, are east of the city.

There’s lots more quirky and artsy stuff in and around Tucson. I look forward to sharing more in the near future.

I’m closing with this sunset capture I captured very quickly. I had gone outside to fire up the grill for dinner. how’s that for serendipitous timing?

The sunsets here can sometimes be quite breathtaking. I’ll probably share more here, so stay tuned…

Last week, when I visited Tucson Botanical Gardens (TBG), I expected to see lots of beautiful plants and trees. What I did not expect to see was quilts. Had I planned my visit instead of just popping in on a whim, I would have realized there was a special exhibit featuring quilts created for Quilt for a Cause. Apparently, this is a regular fundraiser wherein a variety of handmade quilts crafted by local quilters are available for purchase with the proceeds going to support Quilt for a Cause and the TBG.

I was delighted to see such a wide variety of beautiful quilts on display and for sale at what I felt were very reasonable prices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above images were all captured in the space where the main exhibit was housed. As I was leaving the gardens, I noticed another room that housed racks of quilts for sale.

The quilt featured below — a table runner —  was, in my opinion, both pretty and unique, so I decided to capture it for sharing here.

 

 

I enjoyed the exhibit so much, I think I’ll be returning multiple times to see if other quilts from the for-sale racks are rotated into the exhibit. While folks are free to look through the for-sale racks, it’s hard to appreciate the beauty of each quilt when looking at the piece while folded up and hanging on a crowded rack.

There’s one more very cool item I want to share, but that’s reserved for my next post.

Last week, as mentioned in my previous post, I visited Tucson Botanical Gardens (TBG). Below are a bunch of images I captured while strolling through. TBG really is a great place to beat the heat. Temperatures were around 95 degrees Fahrenheit (~35 C), but with the low humidity and abundant shade at TBG, the heat was tolerable.

The first few pics are from the Nuestro Jardin (Barrio Garden). Per the TBG website, Nuestro Jardin honors Tucson’s traditional Mexican-American neighborhood gardens with a charming and colorful display of flowers, trees, herbs, and objects commonly seen in barrio gardens.” A barrio is a Spanish-speaking neighborhood in a city or town in the US, especially in the Southwest.

 

 

 

There are also various artworks scattered throughout TBG’s grounds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, what looks to me like a messy palm tree. I see lots of these around town and have often wondered why people don’t trim the wilted fronds from below the top, green fronds. It would certainly look nicer, in my opinion. As it turns out, that’s a great spot for bats to roost at night and there are lots of bats here in Tucson.

In my next post, I’ll shares pictures of some of the quilts that were on display at TBG.

On Tuesday, I met up with a friend to go for a walk. We had to go pretty early in the day since, now that June is here, temperatures are typically in the mid- to upper-90s, and may even creep into the triple digits. Fortunately, the humidity is low. It still feels quite hot, though. In general, it’s recommended that any walking/hiking done as a leisure pursuit should be done early enough that one finishes no later than 10:00 a.m.

I’ve never really been a morning person, but I’m determined to get out more this year than I did last year. As it turns out, I like hiking through the desert. On Tuesday, I met my friend at 7:30 and we were finished walking by around 9:30. That meant I still had a full day left to fill. I didn’t really feel like sitting around the house, so I decided to visit Tucson Botanical Gardens (TBG). I’d heard that it is a great place to beat the Tucson heat. (We bought a membership late last year and have only visited a few times.)

TBC is located on a 5.5 acre property in midtown Tucson. The Porter family, who originally owned the property, experimented over many years to learn what would thrive in their commercial nursery and private garden. After the nursery closed and Mr. Porter died, the family hoped their garden would still be of use. Through an agreement between Mrs. Porter and the city, Tucson Botanical Gardens was invited to set up headquarters on the property in 1974.

Now, almost 40 years later, TBG really is a delightful space to wander through on a hot late-Spring day.  There are 17 themed gardens providing plenty of shade. With benches and chairs scattered throughout the property, there are numerous quiet little tranquil nooks that make for peaceful spots to sit and relax, meditate, read, nap, whatever.

There were a lot more flowers in bloom than I expected. A couple nice exhibits were happening, too, including a collection of quilts. I took quite a few pictures, so I figured I’d do a blog post (or three) to share some of what I saw.

The first thing that caught my eye was this bright green VW bug. According to TBG’s website, “This car doesn’t run on gas, so Power to the Flower is this year’s theme. This flower powered slug bug will feature plants and flowers named after songs and themes from the 1960’s.” Apparently the car is put to similar use each year, which I think is a great idea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll share more pics from my visit in a couple/few future posts. There are far too many to share all at once.

Three weeks ago, on May 6, I wrote a post describing Changes to the Plan. In it,  I revealed that we were going to stay in Tucson and use it as a home base for a year or three. Rather than buy new furniture to use here, we opted to have our stuff moved from the East Coast to Tucson. Movers were supposed to have loaded up our stuff the day I wrote that post, a Friday, and deliver it to us a few days later on Sunday or Monday.

Sounds pretty fast, right? And maybe a little too good to be true?

As it turns out, it was a lot too good to be true. The “movers” we hired turned out to be yahoos. They sorta reminded me of people who might appear on that cable show, Shipping Wars. Where they get online requests for moving quotes, don’t really read the bid requests, and promise to do the job on the cheap and quickly.

Said yahoos showed up with a cargo van to move 1,300 cubic feet of household goods weighing 7,500 pounds. It was a clusterfuck. Long story short, our stuff did not get moved.

The following week, I did what I thought was sufficient research, and contracted with a moving broker (company who arranges moves) to move our stuff from the East Coast to Tucson. The broker negotiated with a carrier, a moving company with trucks and laborers, to move our stuff. The broker lied through his teeth to me. The representative told me it could take as long as two to 10 days, but more likely would only take five or six days.

The new movers loaded up our stuff on Saturday, May 14. Before loading, they told us it would cost about $3,600 more than the broker quoted us. (The sales rep had changed my size estimate to 1,086 cubic feet, and I missed it before signing the agreement.) When I hadn’t heard any updates by the end of that week, I called the movers. That is when I learned they have up to 21 business days to deliver our stuff.  That was on May 20. My contact said she’d give us 48 hours notice and thought the stuff might arrive this week.

It’s now ten business days since our stuff was picked up by the moving company. Yesterday, I was assuming we’re not getting our stuff this week either since I haven’t heard anything from the movers (a call I placed yesterday has not been returned). Then this morning we got the news… our stuff will arrive on Sunday. Yay!!!

Meanwhile, we have moved everything out of the coach (aka the big-ass RV) and into our new-to-us house. It’s amazing how much stuff we had in the coach! We had to buy a new mattress and box-spring anyway, so at least we have had something to sleep on. Oh, and we’re using patio furniture and lawn chairs as living room furniture.

In other good news… the coach left the RV park today, headed for the shop. Finally. The damage occurred on March 15th, roughly two and a half months ago. We are lucky the RV park we’d been staying in was able to accommodate our 1.5-month extra stay.

Things are finally falling into place. It should take four weeks for the repairs on the coach to be completed. Then we can sell the too-big-for-us RV and get a small travel trailer. I’m so looking forward to getting back on the road.  Here’s hoping the coach sells quickly.