November 9th thru 17th

Catalina State Park Tucson

We are having a fine time here in Tucson. Our friends Jim and Luci Davis from Anchorage are here at their condo, so we have had a couple of nice hikes with them. One at Sabino Canyon, we saw many cactus in different varieties, lots of beautiful scenery and a very pleasant hike, not too difficult--the kind we like. That evening Jim and Luci had another friend of ours who used to live in Anchorage, Randy Knauff over for dinner, so it was like old times on a river sharing stories.

On the 11^th, Jim and Luci took us for a drive up Mount Lemmon, which is on the outskirts of Tucson elevation is about 2600ft and Mt Lemmon has an elevation of over 9000ft.The temperature at Mt Lemmon is about 30 degree cooler than Tucson. Of the many interesting things on the drive, we passed dozens of people biking up the mountain; it was exhausting watching them, as they were moving at quite a clip on their 27 mile ride. On the way down the mountain we stopped at about the 5000ft level and went for a hike on the Old Arizona Trail. 

There are 4 Casita trailers at this campground and we spoke to 2 of the other owners who are full timers living in their 17ft Casita’s. We got a lot of good ideas from them about how to better use the limited space that we have.  So I will be doing a few modifications next time Cassie is in Anchorage. On Sunday morning we had friends Lyle and Rose from Palmer Alaska, visit us at the camp. In the evening we went and shared time with friends David and Susan who live in Tucson. We met David on a Colorado River trip several years ago.  Each evening at Catalina Camp we see many very large Jack rabbits, and several times each evening we hear Coyotes howling, sounds like an Alaskan Dog sled Team.

We decided a couple of weeks ago that it would be nice to be back in Anchorage to share Thanksgiving with Holly’s mother, and stay home through Christmas and into the  New Year. We will be staying in Tucson until the 17^th of November, and flying home to Anchorage that evening from Phoenix. We have spent a couple of days here organizing things, like finding a place to store Chevy and Cassie while we are in Anchorage. We have also spent time getting Cassie ready for storage in a hot climate. In Alaska we have to winterize her so that the plumbing does not freeze up and break. Tucson has different problems when vehicles are left for a length of time so we have made some inquires as how to deal with the local problems. We have hot glued fine mesh netting over all the vent areas to prevent flying bugs from getting into Cassie and building nest etc.