Moving on to Tucson

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

TUCSON, AZ – This morning we battened down the hatches on the RV and said farewell to our desert vista at Benson KOA, and headed for the big city of Tucson. It was a very short drive, only 43 miles, but even in that short distance we saw new types of vegetation by the highway – a fuzzy plant called teddybear cholla that apparently has some pretty nasty spines on it – and those distinctive tall cacti that look like people with crooked arms, more commonly known as saguara cacti.

The part of the city that we have seen so far is spread out, with lots of low buildings and homes. The population is about one million, and we’ve only seen the few roads that brought us to our new RV park, so we can’t say much yet!

The Rincon Country RV Park is a gated community with manicured grounds. The entry is a wide avenue with boulevards in the middle where stately royal palm trees sway in the breeze, ringed at their bases with flowers and green grass. There are more than a thousand individual sites, mostly for snowbirds who stay for months at a time, but a few are set aside for transients like us. However, they did ask the make and year of both our trailer and truck, so if we had said anything much older than what our rig is (2002) we might not have made the grade!

Facilities include pools, hot tub, sauna, hair salon, mini golf, shuffleboard, and lots of social events such as potlucks, bingo and some shows in the assembly hall. I’ve developed a sudden urge to paint my nails and pick out my most presentable outfit before we head out tomorrow!

After settling in our site and a bite of lunch, the first thing we did was head off to get the truck washed. We didn’t want to look like dusty riff-raff from the boonies, after all. The Octopus Car Wash was the answer to our wishes; a veritable army of cleaners descended on the truck when it came out of the soap-and-water part of the process and polished every square inch, inside and out, including a coat of shine on each of the tires! It took more than an hour to complete the process, while we waited in air-cooled comfort in the office area, where coffee and snacks were available for purchase, as well as greeting cards, toys, and car accessories.

We whiled away a good portion of the time chatting with Tom, another customer, who is from Michigan and has been wintering in Tucson every year since 2002. Not content to sit back in his retirement, he was working on schemes to promote use of nuclear power, generate interest in aquaducts from Mexico to bring water to this area, where supply is dwindling, and encourage young people to participate in apprentice-type activities before graduating from high school so they will be ready for the workforce. It was an interesting conversation!

Val was delighted when we went to get the truck, gleaming like new, and the attendant confessed it was his dream vehicle. The thumbs-up he got from the driver next to us at the stop light, looking at our shiny finish, added to his pleasure. We have a fine truck indeed. Tomorrow, when we head out to see the sights, we’ll be doing it in style.