Being Tourists

Dave and I took the afternoon and evening to do a lot of exploring.  Tucson has many, many neighborhoods that have historic designations.  We explored a few of them by just driving down, parking, and walking around.  A lot of homes were built in the 1920s and there is a huge mix of architectural styles.

Wildflowers are a big deal here.

This hacienda style was in the Encanto neighborhood.  Most homes were at least $800,000, had large yards, and a distinctly southwest flair.  Very desirable. 

Lots of care with keeping native landscaping, too.

Snake!

Dave was as excited as I've ever seen him when he came back from a recent hike to tell me about the snake.  This fat Rattlesnake was off the trail when one of the hikers heard the rattle.  Luckily it was just a warning and didn't spring at anyone.  The hike leader took this great photo.

We thought the snakes weren't out until April but apparently not.

Finally, A Hikeable Day

I think now, the storms are done.  Today we actually saw blue skies and the sun.  It ended up being a perfect day (61 degrees) for hiking.  We drove about an hour out towards the Desert Museum.  From there we picked up the Brown Mountain Hiking trail.

This hike was with eight others from the hiking club.  None looked too young.

Plenty of Saguaros as we were pretty close to the Saguaro National Park.

The hiking leader was going at a snail's pace to Dave and I opted to hike ahead.  We ended up back at the parking lot 45 minutes before the rest of them.  So with our extra time we just watched birds and looked for jackrabbits (and saw none).

Poppies in bloom.

Dave in a forest of Saguaros.

Men with Sticks

We went to a hockey game in downtown Tucson on Friday night with friends.  My first!  Here we have the Tucson Roadrunners and they played against the Ontario Reign.  All the players looked very young.  Lots of kids in the audience.  People kept shouting for fights to break out but we never saw any blood.

Last night we had our "old" neighbors over to play Sequence.  All was going along just fine until Tim tried to get out of his chair.  His chair broke in two places.  We were not upset because we "inherited" this dining room set with the old house and I never have liked it.  The wood is very light weight and obviously not durable.  For now the chair is healing, but no over over five years old will be able to use it.

Keeping Warm

I thought that winter was over and we'd be settling into 70 degree days for the rest of our time here.  Not so.  Another storm(s) is coming through and with that comes pretty hefty winds.  Our Pickleball session today was quite chilly and difficult with the wind.  Luckily one of the players makes (and shares) a lot of Limoncello liqueur with her lemons and we all warmed up with that.

My address numbers are done and I am very happy with them.  Now I have to figure out the best way to "glue" these onto some kind of flagstone.  That will be a project for next week.

Tucson Festival of Books

Once again, we volunteered at this festival as Author Escorts.  That means we mean the authors then walk them over to the building where they will give their talk.  Most of them are not from AZ so they have no idea how to get around the U of A campus.  I think it's the best volunteer job at the Festival.  We ended up spending eight hours there, but it was just a really beautiful, sunny day - and no sunburns.

One of the settings for some of "my" authors.

A taste of the crowds.

Dave had been reminding me that I am to make a sign for our house with the address numbers.  I finally got around to making some that will work.  This is a shot of the tiles before the final glaze firing.  If they survive I will post the finished product.

Birds and Berries

I'm curious about the strawberry patch we "inherited" with this house.  I'd say there are at least 100 plants, but I am only seeing about a dozen flowers.  The big question is will the berries be ripe by the time we go home?

The new animal camera has been working great.  But I think the only animals passing through are birds.  So we have lots of photos of doves, house finches, quail, and cardinals.  The cardinals are our favorite and here are two photos of the male in action.  Notice a quail is on the wall behind.