Saying hello and goodbye to Tucson in one breath

I arrived in Tucson, and I am leaving.

I spent last weekend in Los Angeles, at the American Federation of Teachers Convention. Instead of heading straight home, I detoured east by southeast into the Gadsden Purchase.

With my luck, the flight in Monday was delayed. And the great rate I got from Thrifty? It didn’t come with an actual car.

I got to my hotel (nice spot, Lodge on the Desert, big room, fireplace – well, fake, but I think it’s one of those gas jobs – balcony, comfy, clean… it’s a bunch of two-story buildings around a restaurant, bar, and pool) I got to my hotel around midnight, and slept in Tuesday.

More luck, Tuesday there was a morning storm, and it continued. Lightening, and on and off bursts of rain. But the natives seemed to like it, and told me it would be fine to visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and it was. Dips in the road were filling with water, and I’d been warned twice to be very careful. I’d also been advised of the “Stupid Motorist Law” which says that if I drive into a puddle that turns out to be much bigger than that, and need to be rescued – I pay the cost.

The Museum was like a massive nature center / botanical garden. They had an amazing variety of cacti, and the creosote plants (not creosote) scented the drizzly air, and the steel grey sky provided an awesome backdrop. There were animal exhibits, plant exhibits. There was a walk-in aviary, and a walk-in aviary for hummingbirds. I must have stepped in the wrong spot, because one buzzed my head a few times. There was geology, and paleontology. And it got hot when the sun finally came out, but I had already spent hours there. It was absorbing, and entrancing, though perhaps not amazing.

The road took me over a little hill with an overlook back east over the City, and another on the other side, west. On the return trip, as I made it down the east side, I saw a cop with flashers. I slowed. A lot. He was guarding a boulder that had fallen in the road – the shape of a huge wheel of cheese, maybe two-and-a-half feet high, with about a six foot diameter. Another trap for stupid motorists.

In the evening I ate at the Tucson Tamale Company, which was ok. The young woman who helped me let me taste everything, and then even came over to the table to unwrap a tamale for me, and told me I looked way better (she should have said younger) than her mother. One Sonora, one vegan blue.

And then I found the house where my father lived his first few years. Pretty sure the building is not old enough, probably newer construction on the same site. The West University neighborhood was interesting.

Then a few laps in the pool.

And today?  Breakfast. The Pima Air and Space Museum. Connection to Phoenix. And an exit row from Phoenix to JFK.