Lazy, hazy Tucson

It has been a while since I have updated here as to where we are and what we are up to. A large part of that is the scarcity of internet service on military bases, particularly at their campgrounds. If you don’t have enough internet to copy a blog over to a website and hit paste, then that is really poor internet!  I am working on creating a hot spot with my phone, but I want to make sure I can do that within a secure server that no one else can hop on. That will come soon.

In any case, we left Nellis last week, and I had an appointment in Tucson to get the jacks repaired and the heater fixed. It felt great to know that we’d be whole again. We drove through Kingman, on the way to Gila Bend. I miscalculated, and entered the wrong base into the GPS (Gila Bend is a satellite of Luke AFB, and I had entered Luke AFB into the GPS) and ended up arriving at the FamCamp (Family Camp – a military version of the words “RV park”) well after dark, which would normally be just a slight problem, but a) I have horrid night vision and HATE driving at night, and b) the FamCamp is set up with NO auxiliary lighting, and nowhere to even see where the parking spots are, much less the hook ups.

In any case, using a flashlight out the window, we got into a spot, got the electric hooked up and went to bed. We woke to a very barren, very desolate camp, with no potable water to hook up to due to high arsenic content. Technically, they say that adults can drink the water, but they caution against kids drinking it. Frankly, I’d rather buy water to drink than to drink known above acceptable levels of toxins, so we did not even hook the water up to the RV, just electric and sewer. The good news was there was a decent FREE laundry room, so we took advantage of that while we were able. C was in heaven, particularly since they maintained ongoing jigsaw puzzles for patrons to use while laundry cycled. He helped complete a 1500 piece puzzle and he and I did a 300 piece puzzle another day.

As always, we looked to see what else was around, and found a National Monument at Organ Pipe, a beautiful Cactus that “plays music” as the wind blows. The Visitor Center was dedicated to a Park Ranger who was killed by traffickers in the desert. There was a large display speaking of the ranger and his life. The kids were drawn to his story, and I look forward to hearing the reasons for other names of our visitor centers and park dedications.  And I was excited to learn that many of the National Monuments have the Junior Ranger program as well as National Parks. Organ Pipe was badge #5 for them.

Cactus bones – a saguaro skeleton

Cactus bones

Beautiful view of the Organ Pipe and Cholla cacti

Cholla and saguaro and a lovely view of the hills

C with a “baby” saguaro at Organ Pipe NM

Junior Ranger book at Organ Pipe National Monument – Badge #5

We listened to a Ranger Talk on the “Dogs and Cats of the Southwestern Deserts.” The kids really enjoyed it, and we were a little disappointed that we didn’t get a chance to go down into Mexico, because we don’t have passports or cards yet. We were so close to the border that we had to cross two border patrol checkpoints coming back to Gila Bend. The kids thought it was weird, and questioned why they just let us through with a “hey there, are you citizens?” I explained that we are blue eyed, and speak non-accented English and we had just been racially profiled as being acceptable to enter the US. I love the fact that they asked what would have happened if we had looked like many of their friends from school – Hispanic in heritage. I considered asking when we passed yet another checkpoint coming back from Tombstone yesterday, but decided against it.

In any case, Gila Bend was a very brief, very different stay, three nights, two days, then we headed for Tucson, and Davis-Monthan AFB. This base FamCamp is a very different from others we’ve been to (Port Hueneme, Point Mugu, Nellis, and Gila Bend). First, it is CROWDED, to the point that there was a wait list and overflow. We spent the first night in overflow, with no hook ups. I was getting a little frustrated by then, Nellis we had no sewer (although we were able to dump before we left), Gila we had no fresh water (and therefore drained our fresh water tank, using that instead of hooking up to arsenic water) and now, the first night in Tucson, no hook ups at all. The good news, was that since hubby is active duty, and everyone else here are retirees, we got head of the line and into a full hook up site. We have no cable, but there are 20ish over the air channels available, including 5 PBS channels, one a dedicated kids PBS and ion, one of my favorite channels. They allegedly do have WiFi, but none of my computers or tablets or phone can connect to it. There is computer center with Ethernet in the office, available 24/7, which seems very archaic to me, but is better than nothing. I do have excellent cell service with 4G LTE, which has been rare on our adventure so far.

Since arriving here, we have made some friends, and seen some fun things. Thursday, we did the (arguably) most important thing and took the RV to the shop for repairs. A shout out to La Mesa RV in Tucson for their excellent work, making sure we were in, out and on our way (no, we did not wait for them, we left and came back).  We hit Saguaro National Park for yet another Junior Ranger badge, #6.

It wasn’t as hot as it looked out, but it was a beautiful day for a hike

A beautiful view of Prickly Pear – B’s favorite cactus

Little missy sassy pants checking out the saguaro

Hiking at Saguaro National Park

One-two-three-four, march those booties out the door!

Fascinated by the purple cacti

My little scholar reading about mining in the National Park

Copper Mining at Loma Verde before the area was a National Park

Pretty purple-pink cactus flowers

What would it be like if they had no personalities?

Yesterday was a crazy busy day here. We headed to Tombstone, AZ, where we went to Boothill Cemetery, the OK Corral, where we saw a gunfight show, and a good guys vs bad guys display that told the story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday and their battles in Tombstone. The kids really enjoyed it, and I loved seeing their faces. It was a little odd hearing the interventions of modern society while the show was going on – a truck beeping as it backed up, the pipes of a Harley on the street behind and a guy on the street hawking tickets to another show, but it was pretty neat to get into the character’s lives a little bit.

The “town” of Tombstone, at relative peace

A showdown

The “good” guys

“riding” in a carriage

Not an antique mini-van – no room for four!

When we headed back to Tucson, I realized that my military identification card was missing, as in, not in my wallet. As in, how on earth do we get on base to the RV? Yikes. Good to know that the ID office is open until 11 (er 2300), and that they provide a temporary badge, based on a driver’s license and SSN. After a frantic search, I found my ID, inside my comforter. The importance of finding the ID revolved around our plans for the evening. We had signed up for a night hike at Saguaro National Park. The hike was really amazing, and while we missed out on seeing any wildlife (19 people tromping through the desert kinda scares most critters away), we had a very informative time, and the kids and I enjoyed it. We did get to hear bats on a bat scanner, and see scorpions under black light (except for B, she missed both of them and she was not happy about that).

We got back late, and it was such an exhausting day that H was the first one asleep. I don’t know that this has ever happened. Ever. Looking forward to a few more days here, then we move on…