Tucson, lunch, and bird walk

Burr...it was cold this morning. One of our neighbors said that his water faucet froze luckily we didn't have that problem. However, one of our propane tanks ran out of propane this morning so it was on the agenda today to get it filled. We decided to go explore our local surroundings and ended up in central Tucson. We stopped at the Visitor's Center and picked up a lot of information about the sights to see while we are here. Looks like we are going to busy.

I follow a blog of another RVing couple whose favorite restaurant in Tucson is El Charro. I looked it up and they have several locations throughout Tucson. As we were headed to Tucson, we drove past one of the locations. On our return to Catalina State Park, we stopped there for lunch and must agree that what we had was very good (very different from what we are used to in California).

We got home and settled in to read the literature we picked up. Pretty soon, our hummingbird feeder was getting action. Finally!

So was our seed bird feeder - pretty red male. Not sure if he's a House Finch (larger than the ones at Brenda) or a Cassini Finch.
It was such a lovely afternoon so we decided to put the hiking shoes on and take the Bird Trail. We didn't really see any birds that we could take pictures of to share but the hike was interesting. Here is a saquaro with arms growing out of the top; you don't see that very often.
Here's John all ready to hit the trail.
We had to cross a small creek...good shoes, our feet did not get wet.
We think this must be the granddaddy of all saquaro's by the number of arms it has grown.
Here is a beautiful shot of the mountains that border the park.
Here I am on the trail looking for birds. Where are they? This is suppose to be the Bird Trail.
On the Bird Trail loop, we had another section of creek to cross. We got a short view of a hawk before it flew below the bushes but once again, no pictures. This shot really doesn't look like it is in the desert does it?
The hike was a short one-mile loop but the afternoon was gorgeous. When we got back to the trail head, we noticed that they have a bird walk on Friday mornings. We are going to take part of the bird walk tomorrow. It would be nice to take a walk with someone who knows what they are looking at.

Melissa gave us a call this evening. Unfortunately, the bad economy is affecting her company like so many others. The employees are having to take some significant cuts (pay, vacation, furloughs, etc.). Basically, they were told that they should be happy to still have a job. Boy, that really builds job morale. Thankfully, she has her part-time job that is making her happy. Who knows where or when this economic mess is going to end?