Justin’s Diamond RV Park was in a rural area about 25 minutes outside of South Tucson, just passed the intersection of Bopp and San Juoaquin Rds, where the neighbors sell hay and tamales from their front yard. When the road gets really bumpy and narrow, and the frequency of buildings dwindles to few and far between, it’s easy to start feeling a little insecure about your RV park choice. But more often than not, just as the doubts creep in, something like a beautiful white picket fence garnished with butterfly flags and spinning wind toys appears, inviting us into our next home. Justin’s wife Christine, the most friendly, talkative, generous Asian woman I’ve ever met, greeted me in the office to check in. It was a typical mobile home turned club house for the RV Park – complete with a full kitchen where fresh baked cookies had just been made. While I was writing my check for the week’s stay ( $25/night – no credit cards accepted at this park) the glorious smell was something I had to comment on. Christine took that opportunity to list off all the upcoming club house events, the ice cream social tomorrow afternoon, the all you can eat pizza dinner on Friday nights, and more. (These people really care about their business and their guests, and it pays them back 10-fold. Despite not having a pool or showers, most of the people at the park stay for months and months and come back every year.) Our spot was Mountain View #9 at the back edge of the park which bumps right up against Tucson Mountain State Park. Along with my brochures and coupons for local attractions, Christine gave me a hiking trail map showing the 4 different trail...

We’ve switched things up a little bit for the end of March.  Since we saw the most amazing cavern in Tuscon, Kartchner Caverns, we decided to skip the 300+ miles we were going to drive out to Carlsbad and Roswell and just shoot right up to Albuquerque from Las Cruces.  We’ll make a home base there for a week and do day trips out to Santa Fe and Taos and maybe even do a SKIING DAY?! Pray for us that southern Colorado/Durango stays snow free! We have plans to ride the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railway, visit Telluride and Ouray Hot Springs. Date City State Nights Activities 22-Mar Las Cruces NM 3 White Sands National Monument – Alamagordo 23-Mar truth or consequences hot springs 24-Mar 25-Mar Isleta Pueblo/Albuquerque NM 8 Carlsbad Cancelled 26-Mar 27-Mar Roswell Cancelled 28-Mar Albuquerque, Santa Fe – off of 215 South 29-Mar Santa Fe Natinal Forest Scenic Byway 30 mins http://byways.org/stories/69123 30-Mar Turquoise Trail, small mining towns Cibola National Forest to Sandia Crest – pg 294 in Scenic 31-Mar Puye Cliff Dwellings – Espanola ? 1-Apr Chain of Craters Back Country Byway – 90 mins http://byways.org/explore/byways/68990 2-Apr Durango CO 5 27847 Hwy. 550 North 3-Apr ouray hot springs Mesa Verde National Park, Uncompahgre National Forest 4-Apr telluride 5-Apr mesa verde 6-Apr 7-Apr Monument Valley UT 2 8-Apr 9-Apr Lake Powell AZ 7 10-Apr 11-Apr 12-Apr 13-Apr 14-Apr 15-Apr 16-Apr St. George UT 10 17-Apr 18-Apr 19-Apr 20-Apr 21-Apr 22-Apr Saundie and Donna 23-Apr 24-Apr 25-Apr 26-Apr Bryce Canyon UT 4 27-Apr 28-Apr 29-Apr 30-Apr Capitol Reef National Park UT...

The Desert Botanical Gardens was about a 45 minute drive from Phoenix and well worth the trip, especially because we just happened to visit on a day that the park was FREE from 1pm to closing (normally there’s an $18 admission). Even though I knew we were visiting on the early side of blooming season, I still fell victim to my own high expectations, again. The grounds were quite large and well manicured, but not covered with the variety of blooms as I had hoped. Instead there was only an occasional spot of color. This caused me to take a multitude of photos from every angle. After days of desert landscape, I’m over the cacti and ready for a change of scenery. That almost sounds impatient on some level. I prefer to think of it as clarity on where my preferences don’t lie: vital information in determining what a girl wants. Insert, Christina Aguilera lyrics here. Below are those cacti that I found most interesting. Below was a cool art instillation within the park called The Four Seasons by Philip Haas at Desert Botanical Garden, Mesa. Trouble is, now I can’t remember which is which. Maybe you can tell the...

After our day of hiking in Nature Church Sedona, we woke up refreshed. We have a morning ritual with coffee. Ali wears her mom’s robe, I don my softest grey sweat jacket and shorts and we open our front door to see and feel and smell how the world is. It had been too cold to venture outside or even keep the door open, but on this morning, it was glorious. We were having one of those moments where we can’t stop smiling because we feel so grateful and giddy about our life. However, on travel days we don’t get to revel in our morning for too long. We were bound for Mesa, Arizona that day. A few days earlier, as we arrived in Sedona and found out about the snowy weather, we decided to extend our stay by a day in order to have at least one day of sun. Unfortunately, Usary Regional State Park in Mesa couldn’t accommodate our change of plans, so we hit the Internet and found another option. It was called Monte Vista Village, and I’ll just leave it at that for now. One of the more hated parts of this lifestyle for Allison and I is the unkind intimacy we must have with our poop. It’s not everyday thankfully, but often enough we are faced with the always odiferous and sometimes juicy task of emptying and cleaning our black and grey water tanks. We were taught how to navigate this process a couple of years ago by our dear friend Karl on our very first outing with our rig. I have a crystal clear memory of that day. It was at Costanoa, the wind was blowing gently, it was a warm morning, and I hung on every word...

Oh Patience. You’re such a beautiful virtue. I marvel at your tolerance, how you shrug off irritations with a genuine smile, and embrace time like it’s unending. But right now you’re a little like those bunnies that are hopping around the desert out behind our RV, an adorable little skittery thing that keeps dodging our advances. We’re not even really expecting to hold you or pet you yet, we just want to be close enough to SEE your softness. So stop jumping behind the cactus and sit still dammit, we don’t have all day! Zen Snatchers. That’s that we call them now, the things that test our patience or sense of well-being. I’ve written a lot about the driving which is still of course the Big Daddy of Zen Snatchers, a major culprit for stress and anxiety in this otherwise meant-to-be-idyllic life. But there’s actually a tribe of small toddler Snatchers living in the RV with us that we’re trying to tame. One of them is the super special locking lid Tupperware that Ali put the flour in. Granted it probably wasn’t tested specifically for flying around an RV cabinet at speeds of 55 mph on mountain roads, but still, its advertising carried plenty of reassurances about its fitness for the job. It failed on a scale so big it might as well have been a bowling ball advertised as a cotton ball. Ali was able to scoop most of the flour back into its box, as she removed every item in the cabinet to bathe it. The box of flour now lives jammed tightly in between 2 other boxes on the BOTTOM of the cabinet. Zero elevation. Zero wiggle. And I think she even taped the lid shut. That box is being punished....