Oh Boy! Settled In Tucson, AZ, For The Winter

We reached a MILEstone yesterday! Literally! We stopped at a gas station at the exact moment that we hit 100,000 miles on the truck!  That is a lot of driving, riding, and exploring in 5 1/2+ years!  Doug is great about maintaining the truck so here’s to another 100,000 as we keep on truckin’ (excuse the pun!).  

It got down to 26 degrees at Deming, NM, night before last!  I am so sick of the cold weather, jeans, heavy jackets,and earmuffs!  All the standing water in the campground was frozen, of course.  We were looking forward to finally heading to Tucson and reaching our destination for the winter.  We have traveled the same part of I-10 a few times so the rest of the drive through New Mexico and southern AZ was the  same scenery as the last few days, nothing out there!  Just wide open spaces!  But it was fun to remember the same landmarks that I had in my scrapbooks from previous years.  As massive as the US is, and all the places to travel, it seems funny that we have driven the same area for the 4th time!  It kind of makes the US seem smaller, especially when you run into your friends in some of the same places.

 

We remarked earlier in the week that we had not seen any trains like we used to out in the desert.  Then the day before yesterday, we saw one.  But yesterday, we saw many all along our route!  Of course, my camera is ready and I am even sticking it outside the window to get a clear shot.  Guess the engineer in the close up shot must have “There goes another one of those crazy RVing people! You would think she had never seen a train before!”   Just loved seeing those trains in the distance making the mountains look even higher among the desert vistas that you just wouldn’t see back in VA (home) with all the trees.  So many relativse in my family have worked, and still work, for the railroad.   There is a unique feeling to feel like you are so free because you are not hemmed in.  That is just one more thing we love about the West so much.

 

Oh Boy!  Welcome to Arizona! And Doug was the first one to spot a Saguaro Cactus near Tucson.   It was 65 when we arrived and the office at the RV park asked where our heavy coats came from!  It is going to be in the upper 70s the rest of the week! So goodbye jeans and jackets!  Hello shorts,  and T-shirts!  Lovin’ Tucson again already!

     

We discovered In-N-Out Burger (fast food hamburgers) when in Mesa, AZ, in 2011.  We figured there MUST be one in Tucson.  Yep!  We passed it on the way to the RV park.  So after getting set up late in the afternoon, that is exactly where we headed!  We LOVE their hamburgers and that is all they serve.  Big juicy cheeseburgers with the fixin’s for only $2.25 and fries for $1.60.  You couldn’t get a deal like that at McDonalds!  I think it is going to be dangerous to the old waist line having the place so close to the park!  Walk….Hike….Walk….Hike….Burger for lunch…….walk….hike….walk….! Did I walk off enough calories for tomorrow!!!?