It was 16° this morning. All of our heating degrees are being taken by New England where it has been 20° above normal. We've been about 15° below normal. Sigh ...
It was a cool and wet weekend. Our original plan was to visit the Tucson Desert Museum on Saturday, camp overnight in the nearby county campground, the Gilbert Ray Campground, spend Sunday at Saguaro National Park, overnight again then go to the Dodge Dealer on Monday to get Speedy fixed. It didn't quite work out that way.
The first change was Saturday when it dawned cold and rainy. The local radar showed snow at the higher elevations as well. We decided that staying at the refuge where we had a warm van was probably the better idea. What's more, we had laundry to do. The Desert Museum is primarily an outdoor facility which would not have been much fun in the cold and rain. We spent the day doing all of the delayed updates to the Speedy Journal, uploading photos, reading and installing the Roku box.
I had brought our Roku from home in the hope that we might be able to connect it to Speedy's little TV and use the Internet for streaming. We have a moderately fast connection here and there was hope that it might work. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to bring the remote controller and it is only controlled by the remote. In a phone conversation with Sally, one of our friends at home, I mentioned this and she offered to stop by our house and pick it up and send it. She did and we are grateful for our remote and for the other treats she snuck into the box.
We had been too busy to try it out but our lazy Saturday gave us the opportunity. I connected the box, added new batteries to the remote, connected to the Outpost network and it worked! It doesn't give us 1020p HD TV, but it is very watchable on Speedy's 13-inch screen. A bit of binge watching occurred on Saturday evening (catching up with the new season of Doc Martin).
On Sunday, we had a leisurely start and headed off to the National Park. The skies had cleared but it was still pretty chilly in the morning and we could see snow on the peaks to the north of Baboquivari and on Mount Lemmon, north of Tucson. There are two separate units in Saguaro National Park, the original one on the east side of the city, the Rincon District, and a newer unit, the Tucson District, on the west side. We went to the Tucson District.
After the requisite stop at the visitor center, we took the scenic loop, an even rougher dirt road than the refuge's Pronghorn Scenic Loop. I've never seen so many cacti. Not only were there the giant Saguaro cactus, for which the park is named, but also lots of barrel cactus, several varieties of Cholla cactus, Hedgehog cactus and Prickly Pear cactus. There were also lots of Ocotillo, which aren't a cactus but might as well be since they look like long sticks with lots of sharp thorns sticking out. There were also many Palo Verde and Mesquite bushes. It was a good idea to stick to the path, since there wasn't room to walk between all the prickly plants.
We stopped at Signal Hill, a picnic area in the park and the trailhead for several hikes, for lunch and a hike. The hill itself is a low mound of rocks, but it overlooks the Avra Valley south of the park. There are a large series of Hohokam era petroglyphs along the path we took to the top. Sadly a few modern graffitti petroglyphs were pecked in as well. From there we took a short hike along the Cactus Wren Trail, where we did see Cactus Wren along with two life birds, Phainopepla and Black-throated Sparrow. We stuck to the trail, but I still found cactus spines in my jeans later on.
After the hike and informal bird walk, it was off to the campground. The Gilbert Ray campground is run by Pima County and is part of the Tucson Mountain Park, which borders the national park. It is a pretty large campground with over 100 electric sites. This was a benefit as it was rather cold overnight and we could run our small electric heater.
On Monday morning rain was predicted again and we drove into Tucson early to get to the Dodge dealer to have Speedy's steering gear repaired (again!). Supposedly, the power steering gear seals were leaking and the entire gear set had to be replaced. Also, the tie-rods and idler arms of the steering linkage had excessive play and were the cause of the squeaking. The idler arms and the steering gear box had been replaced within the last 10,000 miles, so both were unexpected.
The work was supposed to take all day, so we asked if we could have a loaner car to do some errands rather than just sitting around. They agreed and we headed out into the city. We'd hoped to stop at a few shops for various things that we needed, but they were a bit spread out. Everything in Tucson seems very spread out. We probably drove a good 30 miles just going from place to place within the city.
About an hour and a half after we left the dealer, we got a call from them. There was nothing wrong with the steering gear and its seals. It was actually the power steering intercooler, a little 2 x 6 inch radiator that sits between the steering pump and the steering box. That is what I'd told them I thought was the problem when we first brought it in. What's more, they didn't have all the parts in stock, so we'd have to bring it back in again. Just what we need— another weekend interrupted by a trip to Tucson Dodge. They were working on the other repair though.
By late afternoon, Speedy was ready. We stopped at a Safeway supermarket on the way out of town to do our weekly shopping and were on the road to the refuge as it was getting dark. Just as soon as we got to Route 86, the road out of town, the squeak returned. $1,700 worth of steering updates didn't solve the problem we'd brought it in for. Needless to say, they got an angry phone call on Tuesday. It is a bit upsetting as there wasn't any problems with the steering and even if there was excessive play in the parts, it wasn't currently affecting the handling, which was the best it had been in a couple of years. They said they will find the problem this time, but so far they are 0 for 2 in their diagnostic skills.
It was dark when we got to Three Points, where we turn south onto Route 286 to the refuge, so we decided to stop at Cindy Lou's Restaurant for dinner (it is the only place in the area). One of the dinner specials was the open-faced turkey sandwich with mashed potato, vegetable and salad. The salad was okay, but the rest of it qualified as the worst meal ever—a large pile of un-toasted soft white bread, sliced turkey from the lowest end of turkey cold-cuts, insipid white gravy that tasted like plastic, mashed potatoes that tasted like they came out of a box and mushy peas. The perfect end to a perfect day... did we mention that it rained most of the day as well.
Tuesday, the last day of our "weekend" was spent recuperating. We slept in (that is until 6:30 rather than our usual 5:30), we did laundry, we cleaned up Speedy and, the highlight of the day, we went to the Sasabe Post Office to mail a couple of things and pick up the refuge mail.
Sasabe is a really small town right on the border and has the closest post office (it's also the refuge mailing address). It has a tiny small-town post office. When we arrived it was full of small children. Sasabe has an elementary school with a total of 19 students, seven of them were in the Post Office. They were third or forth graders on a field trip. In Cohasset, they take field trips to foreign countries, as kids we took field trips to the Science Museum. In Sasabe, they get to go to the local Post Office.
They were quite well behaved, listened to the Postmistress talk about what the Post Office does and asked lots of questions and got candy canes before they left. The kids were mostly Hispanic with some Anglos, and were spoken to in both English and Spanish by their teachers and seemed pretty facile in both languages. We are told that a number of the Sasabe school students are Mexicans, but also US citizens, and commute to school across the border from Sasabe, Sonora.
After they left, we picked up the refuge mail (several items were ours, including replacement interior lights for Speedy), left off our letters and headed back to refuge for a much better dinner than the previous evening.
Saguaro National Park Photos
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