Enjoying Tucson Arizona

We have now been at Mission View RV Resort for four weeks and are enjoying the RV park and the Tucson area. One of the nicest features is our site that backs up to the desert. We have a wonderful spot to view the sunsets and mother nature puts on a show for us most evenings. It is best on partly cloudy days, when the clouds reflect the colors.

sunset reflections in the clouds in front of our site

Other than enjoying the daily sunsets, the park offers quite a few activities each day. We haven’t participated in all of them, but have taken advantage of a few. I especially enjoy the musical entertainment which they provide most weekends as well as the dinners which have been pretty good. We participated in the Christmas day dinner where the park provided turkey and ham and everyone brought a side dish or dessert to share. Everything was delicious. We also enjoyed a few free soup dinners prior to bingo as well as the New Year’s Eve dinner and party.

Mid week, the arizona fiddlers put on a show

The band on New Year’s Eve was a lot of fun and it was great to see everyone enjoying the dance floor. This past Sunday they had a three piece combo who played mostly silky jazz, swing music and pop songs and they were also very good. It was a smaller crowd but still the dance floor was put to good use.

silk and soul played on sunday night and were very good

During the day, I have gone to a couple art classes and we enjoyed the indoor pool and hot tub one time. We definitely have to go to the pool a bit more often but with the colder weather we have had lately, we just didn’t feel like getting into a swim suit. Since it is indoors and heated, we should use it even when it is cold. Yes, I said colder weather. We have had a few days since the holidays that it barely got to 50 degrees and some nights in the mid 20’s. Today was nice with warm sunshine and a high in the low 60’s. Hopefully it will continue to get warmer.

On some of the nice sunny days, we have done some touring around the area. There is a drive out through the desert that goes through Tucson Mountain Park and takes you to Saguaro National Park West. On the way you pass Old Tucson Studios and the Sonoran Desert Museum. So far, we have stopped at all but Old Tucson Studios. That one is a bit pricey and we have heard it wasn’t worth the cost. They have a new show starting on Jan. 20 so we may still go to check it out.

We enjoyed the ride out there and loved all of the parks. We ended up buying an annual pass to the Sonoran Desert Museum. The cost was about the same as it would be if we visited there twice so we decided to get the annual pass and go each week for a few hours. That way we can take our time to see the entire park and enjoy seeing different parts of the museum each week. This museum is mostly outside and covers the plant and animal life in the Sonoran Desert. On our first trip, we saw the humming bird area, butterfly garden, the native birds enclosure, the mountain goats as well as a ranger presentation on snakes and gila monsters. It is beautiful there and very interesting to learn about the Sonoran desert. I am looking forward to our next trip.

We didn’t yet go on any of the hiking trails in Tucson Mountain or Saguaro National Park so we definitely have to do that on another trip out there. We drove through slowly and stopped at the many pull offs to enjoy the scenery. I love the mountain and desert views. It is pretty cool that there seem to be mountains in all directions here so every view of the horizon is rimmed with mountains. I hope you enjoy the photos of these parks and this area. It is truly stunning. The pictures don’t do justice to the scenes we are experiencing.

On days that we go out to tour, we usually stop for a late lunch or you could call it an early dinner. We have tried out a few different Mexican restaurants in the area and there are quite a few. I don’t think we will be able to try them all but we have found a couple that we like. I chose one to go to the week between Christmas and New Year’s because of the fancy drink pictures on there website. The food was just ok, but I had a dessert drink that was delicious. I would go back sometime to sample another drink!

On one of the cooler but sunny days this past week, we decided to visit the Pima Air and Space Museum. This museum is fairly large and houses quite a collection of airplanes and helicopters mostly from the military. I took many pictures of planes and will just share a few with you. I found the bombers most interesting and Tim really liked the helicopters. I think Trent just liked walking around with us!

we liked how some of the planes were painted

we liked that they had an old twa plane sitting in between the various military planes.

there are at least 5 indoor hangars to tour. definitely need a bit of time to see everything.

i thought it was cool to see a plane taking off from the airport while walking among the planes at the museum

We are here for another month so I am sure I will have more to tell you about in a couple of weeks as well as more pictures of our visits to the Desert Museum.

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