Week ending Dec 28, 2017 Tucson Area

Friday and Saturday were a bit cool, so Joan did some Christmas baking.
 
Sunday, we went back to Saguaro NP and did the one mile nature walk loop to the Freeman homestead.

Trees hanging onto the wall of a wash

Prickly Pears big enough to have a trunk

After that we did a mile up the Tanque Verde Ridge Trail.   That got us far enough to get a view from a saddle down the valley on the other side of the hill.   It starts right on the edge of the hills, so was a pretty steep trail, taking us 2 hours for the return trip.  

Tucson from Tanque Ridge

Looking east from the saddle

 

On Christmas day, we took some veggies and baking over to have Christmas dinner with Rupert, Helen and Keri.  They had done up a nice prime rib, mashed potatoes, corn, and a bunch of other goodies.    We enjoyed the meal on a table beside their trailer in the sun, and had a great chat afterwards. 

Wednesday, we  went to check out Universal Ranch RV Park a few miles north of Arivaca, southwest of Tucson.  It is in interesting looking ranch country, lots of scrub, but not a lot of cactus.  The RV park is very basic, and there was no one in the office.   We couldn't get 4G cell service to use our internet, but their wi-fi worked.   We used it to check the spelling of the ad for a missing 'blue healer' dog.  We went into Arivaca, and bought some cheese and flatbread for lunch.  A quiet town, although the mercantile had a steady flow of customers.  From Arivaca, we drove west through the Buenos Aires Nat. Wildlife Refuge to route 286, then north along the edge of the refuge.   We stopped at an information kiosk at the north end of the park.   We saw that they had about a hundred campsites marked in the park.   The easiest one to get to was about 3 miles south, but when we got to the road, there was closed gate with signs 'authorized entry only', so we couldn't see what the campsites were like.