Phoenix to Tucson

Odometer 64370

Trip 165 miles

New River, AZ to Catalina State Park (near Tucson)

This Saturday night turned out to be pretty special.  Friends were getting together for a Christmas event.  Six Model T driving couples were invited to take an after dark tour of several exclusive neighborhoods to view the Christmas lighting in each.  These normally gated communities had decided to open the gates to light peepers for one evening only.  

We conspired to tour these communities in our dressed for the occasion Model Ts.  All of us festooned our cars with strings of colored lights and under cover of darkness we took off in a caravan.

Joan and I had a blast.  The night was clear and cool, so we were dressed in puffy coats, wool caps and gloves.  After the tour we met at friends house for hot toddys and finger food- what a night.  Thank you Dick and Helen!

Sunday morning we carpooled over to Dick and Helen's house to retreive the Ts, and drove them back home in the daylight.  That set our departure of until about 11 AM but it was sure worth it !

 Our route for today is rather circuitous because we want to search out a station where we can refill our empty propane tank- and Sunday isn't the best day to do this.  We chewed through all of our 30 gallons on propane on the trip down and during our 3 week stay in New River at our friends house. The first station we stopped at in Anthem wanted $4 a gallon, three said they didn't have anyone that could pump it for us, and finally the Flying J Station in Eloy filled us up at $3.29 a gallon a savings of $21.30 on the tankful.  Frustrating at the very least.  

I wanted to take AZ 79 down from Florence - however we HAD to get propane and there were no prospects in that direction, so I-10 it was.

  Our destination for today is Catalina State Park, just north of Tucson, with Amazing views of the Santa Catalina Mountains.  The Google estimate of 3 hours, stretched into a 5 hour drive for us with our hunt for propane and a half hour lunch stop in a rest area on I-10.  Finally by 4PM we were in our space and looking at the view shown below...

Push Ridge,  a spectacular granite cliff rises high above the RV park. 

Armed with the new SkyCatcher app on my iPad, I felt very confident I could get sat TV hooked up quickly and efficiently.

Joan dutifully monitored the Dish pointing screen on the TV- but I could never get it aimed correctly, although we tried valiantly for a couple hours-  We need Mark and his satellite finder.  Not sure where I was going wrong.  I guess when we get to Ajo, we can get Mark to give us some instruction.  I ended up taking the dish and tripod down and stowing it so we could move tomorrow to our next RV park, the South Forty RV Ranch.  When we were reserving space, we could only get 4 nights here in Catalina, that's all that was available.

After doing our best to set up the Dish antenna, we took a long walk through this campground and one adjacent to us.  We hike a short distance up the ridge behind the park and were rewarded with this beautiful vista.

More on exploring Tucson- stay tuned!

Your Traveling Friends

Jeff and Joan