Tucson

We drove straight from John and Marcia’s house to the Southwest Old Time String Band Gathering held at a Girl Scout Camp in East Tucson. We found some real estate and set up camp.

This is a sweet little festival and we’ve met some new friends here that we don’t get to see at the east coast festivals. An added bonus was when friends, who we met at Amistad National Recreation Area, showed up. We had mentioned to them that we were headed to the gathering. The Crows are JB, Katrina and their 5 year old daughter Kaylin. They are traveling around in a fixed up FedEx truck, just seeing the country.

Notice the feller in shorts and tails? He changed his name to Henry T. Fiddler (Henry The Fiddler). Say what you want the man knows thousands of tunes. During the pot luck dinner he serenaded the guests. He took requests for any tune except Old Time. I requested Autumn Leaves and he did a wonderful rendition.

We left the Festival on Sunday and traveled a short distance to the Snyder Hill BLM just west of Tucson, which turned out to be a really beautiful place to camp. This is free dispersed camping and so there are no amenities what so ever. You just find a piece of land that you like and set up camp. You’re allowed to stay 14 days.

Sue and I hiked to the top of the hill and when we got back the Crows were setting up camp right next to us. What a pleasant surprise, we enjoyed their company for the next 3 days.

While at the BLM we visited San Xavier Mission.  The mission was founded in 1692 by Jesuit priests and this building was begun in 1783 by a Franciscan who borrowed 7,000 pesos from a local rancher to build the church. The mission is a working church for the Tohono O’odham peoples who live nearby. People pin charms that are called Milagros to the skirt of the Madonna as a part of a petition for healing. You can see the pregnant woman charm as well as a lung charm.

 

We also went to the Pima Air & Space Museum. This place is extraordinary. I couldn’t get over how big it was. 5 big hangers and acres and acres of planes and helicopters outside. I walked around until I was exhausted. I don’t know much about aircraft but this museum really got my attention. Highly recommended.

We hated to do it but we headed over to the Tucson KOA for one night to give Shiny’s batteries a good charge and empty our holding tanks. At $64 per night it was the most we have paid on this trip to camp. So far we have averaged $15 per day to camp. Not bad.

In the morning we dropped Shiny off at the Tucson Airstream dealer for a hitch upgrade and to fix some minor warranty items. Here’s a tip to any would be long distance RVr’s towing a trailer. Get a good trailer hitch right out of the gate! According to the truck computer I get 1 1/2 miles per gallon better after the new hitch was installed.

While Shiny was at the dealer we drove to Scottsdale for a short but lovely visit with my sister Carol and her husband Denis. Denis makes a mean Margarita!!