Category: Travel

Travel topics

A lovely day for the desert, but check your search results!

We had to pick up our laundry this morning, and chose to combine that trip with a breakfast expedition to The Good Egg on Speedway. We succeeded on both counts.

After that, we were ready to go to the Desert Museum; I punched the name into the GPS and took the first hit of three listings. I wondered why the icon looked like the Mona Lisa, but I figured it was just the gift shop. And off we went, into the non-wilds of Northwest Tucson. As we drove, I started to get suspicious, because all of the information we had for the museum warned about the curvy road for the last few miles, and we were on straight, mostly four-lane, roads. Finally, we arrived at our destination: a shopping center, where one of the storefronts housed the Oro Valley Art Studio, part of the Art Institute of the Desert Museum.

So I went back to the GPS and tried again, this time verifying that the location I picked was on Kinney Road. 22 miles later, we were at the Desert Museum itself, right at the stroke of noon.

The weather was beautiful for a day at the Desert Museum — sunny but not hot. And we spent the rest of the afternoon there, leaving just at closing time.

A docent was kind enough to take a picture of all three of us near the beginning of the trail:

Of course, we saw plenty of saguro cacti:

The Museum houses animals as well as plants:

although not all of them are fierce:

I prefer the plants to the animals, though:

We didn’t quite see all of the exhibits today, but we came close. And I’d go back cheerfully.

But not on this trip; tomorrow morning, we leave on the first leg of our trip home. After breakfast with Diane’s dad and SO for breakfast at 8am, at the Good Egg on Grant. I really don’t want to face a long drive with only hotel coffee to go on.

A taste of Tucson

We started the day with the complimentary hotel breakfast; it was OK, but the coffee was insipid. So I suggested a walk to the nearest Starbucks afterwards, which turned into about a one-mile each way exploration of East Grant Avenue. We didn’t actually discover much that we hadn’t seen from the car (about the only thing that was new to us was the Fry’s supermarket), but it was nice to be able to stretch our legs.

After that walk, we moved Diane’s dad’s luggage to our room to wait until they could check in across the street, and then we went exploring. We went east first, out towards Fellowship Square to see what banks would be convenient (and, not incidentally, to find a service laundry for our stuff), and then we drove downtown to check out the historic districts and have lunch. The Tucson Visitor Center was very helpful, giving us several brochures (and giving us a huge “newcomer’s packet” for Diane’s dad). We explored the area around the original Presidio of Tucson, including a delicious lunch at El Charro Cafe and a long browse through the Old Town Artisans, especially the Old Town Pot Shop. I was amused by the Mexican-themed Judaica of Julie Szerina Stein, but not quite enough to buy any (though the Seder plates were tempting).

After that, we helped Diane’s dad and SO move into their temporary home-while-waiting-for-home, including a shopping trip to the aforementioned Fry’s and Trader Joe’s to stock their fridge. I am afraid they’ll be counting the days until they can move into their apartment — but in the meantime, they will be visiting relatives in the Mountain Time Zone as often as they can. Tomorrow, they were invited to go on an expedition to a local casino; we plan to visit the Desert Museum instead.

Dinner tonight was at China Thai on Tanque Verde. The food and service were fine, but unlike lunch, there was no sense of place — we could have been anywhere.