BIG Cactus, Feeling Like Death & Taxes, and Eight Months on the Road

We needed to park somewhere long enough to get mail, so opted for five nights in a private RV park – Justin’s Diamond J RV Park - on the outskirts of Tucson. We’ll use this as a base to visit Saguaro National Park and get some chores and maintenance done.  One of the real draws for this park was the miles of hiking and biking trails leaving right from the campground!

Great trails right from the RV park!

Hmmmm... maybe metal isn't a good fashion choice in the desert. :)

Desert sunset.

We arrived on Monday, 3/20, and made the first of several runs into Tucson. First stop was Camping World for a new sewer hose - some things just automatically go to the top of the priority list. Lol. 

Couldn't resist a quick stop at this rock shop on the way to Tucson.

On Tuesday, we visited Saguaro National Park and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  The national park’s namesake is the giant saguaro cactus. There are no trees in the desert, but these cacti can grow over 50 feet tall. What is fascinating is how long that takes. I usually think of trees reaching maturity in 20 years or so, but the saguaros grow very slowly. At one year they may only be ¼ inch tall, at 15 years barely a foot, at 50 years maybe seven feet tall, after 75 years they start to sprout branches or arms, by 100 years they may reach 25 feet, and those that live 150-200 years can tower over 50 feet and weigh more than 16,000 pounds. It’s like the desert version of being in the redwoods. 😊

Miles of saguaro cactus.

A woody saguaro skeleton. 

It must suck to be 75 years old and just getting zits. Lol.

We drove the scenic loop in the west portion of the Saguaro National Park and stopped at Signal Hill to view the petroglyphs. Like many of the areas we’ve visited, evidence of ancient civilizations remains. These petroglyphs are from the Hohokam culture dating from 200 – 1400 A.D.  

Caught a glimpse of the webmaster, but he was too shy to come out.

A few cactus were blooming.

Petroglyphs at Signal Hill. 

We were warned.

We decided to hike a 3-mile loop trail from Signal Hill. It was hot, hitting 97°, so we weren’t tempted to try anything longer.  We were tramping along, Rog in the lead, when this incredibly loud HISSSSSSSSSSSSS erupts right between us. Curled up next to the trail was a rattler and he was giving us hell. A blood curdling scream may not be the most articulate way to indicate danger, but it’s what came naturally to me! Lol.

Rog ran forward and I backed up. Mr. Diamondback had been enjoying the shade of a dead saguaro and we must have startled him. He looked very displeased at the disturbance and starts heading my way. I back up some more – quickly. He was really just trying to stay out of the sun, but it sure felt like he was giving me the evil eye. Rog (from a safe distance mind you) yells at me to get a picture. Really?? Forget the camera, I wanted both eyes on the slytherin.  Once it was clear he was making for the shade and not me, I did try for a couple of photos. Although I was still shaking from the adrenaline rush so they turned out a little blurry. No worries, I wasn’t chasing him down for another photo op. Lol.

Once the pointy end was moving away from me, I got a picture. :)

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is just outside the national park and definitely worth a visit. If we had it to do over again, I’d make this a separate day trip. The museum is part exhibits, part zoo, part botanical garden, part aquarium and all together enjoyable. There are lots of trails to walk too, but we were pretty much done in by the heat and our earlier hike. We did participate in a 2-hour docent led tour which was very interesting.

The Gila Woodpecker makes a new nest in a Saguaro each year.
Other birds, including elf owls, take up residence in the abandoned nests.

This guy is making use of the available real estate.

He does not look happy. Lol.

Agave in bloom.

Endangered Turk's Head cactus.

By Wednesday, the scratchy throat that I’d been waking up with the past couple days had morphed into a full-on head cold. Oh joy! Well if I’m going to be miserable, I might as well be totally miserable, right? So let’s just leap into the dark abyss and do our taxes. Randi had sent us our tax documents in the mail and the cell service here was fairly decent, so I couldn’t come up with a single viable excuse to put it off. Ugh!  Rog went mountain biking while I wrestled with H&R Block and went through a box of Kleenex. That was mostly for the head cold, although I could have shed a few tears at our final tax bill. Let’s just say that we will be increasing our withholding significantly. Ouch.

Rog had a great time on the mountain bike trails, some areas were still steep and rocky, but there was more of the fun single track that he enjoys. Of course, the cacti create another kind of challenge, especially the cholla which is so well known for its ability to reach out grab you that one variety is known as “jumping cholla.”

Jumping Cholla - give it a wide berth!

Single track trail - Rog's idea of fun. :)

A new perspective. :)

Ok, so the steep rocky bits can get old even for Rog. Lol.

Even with my sniffles, we’ve been walking the trails near the campground and enjoying the Saguaro cactus which are everywhere! It is kind of fun to anthropomorphize the crazy cactus – they grow in such a wild array of all-too-human shapes that it’s easy to see that one as waving, that one as dancing, hey that one has a belly button… you get the picture. 😊

Bellybutton!

March 25^th marked eight months on the road!  Wow. Is anyone else having trouble believing it’s been that long??  I sure am. We’ve been thoroughly enjoying the more leisurely pace of travel with only “jello” plans. However, we did decide to do a little forward thinking so we could pick a route that would get us to Fruita, Colorado by April 27^th for their Fat Tire Mountain Bike Festival. Rog is thinking about a new full suspension bike (something about being old and beat to death on these rocky trails. Lol). At the festival many of the bike companies will have demo bikes available for participants to ride and he is itching to try some out before making a final decision.

Anyhow, just a few days after we laid out our plan Rian mentioned that it had been five months since she’d seen us. ☹  Having an itinerary made it possible to look at dates and airports and it took just a week and a flurry of emails to get Rian booked for a visit in April. She’ll come out to see Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado with us. Nice to know she still enjoys hanging out with the old folks.

We put in a little more time on the road this month, traveling 1056 miles. So far we’ve driven the RV a total of 10,966 miles (and hey, I drove 84 of those!), pumped 1320 gallons of diesel and stayed at 70 different places. We added three national parks to our list this month (Guadalupe Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns and Saguaro), so our totals stand at: 18 National Parks/Monuments, many state/local parks plus Disney and Universal Studios. And we finally made it out of Texas, so the number of states we’ve been to has jumped to 31. 

It turned out that our 8-month anniversary fell on a travel day, so we left Tucson to head north toward the Petrified Forest National Park. I love trees. I love rocks. But I really love trees that are rocks!! Lol. Looking forward to this one!