Hiking, shopping, enjoying

We were up and at the spot where the Ranger was suppose to lead the hike on the Bird Trail at 8:30 a.m. One other lady showed up but no Ranger did. John and I decided to take the Nature Trail and once we were finished, we decided to do the Bird Trail. We actually got to see some bird life.

I'm playing with a new format for pictures. You can click on the picture frame and it will enlarge for a better view. I'm not sure I like it but it sure speeds up the downloading of pictures to the blog. Let me know what you think.

Photos left to right: (1) Curve-billed thrasher; (2) Canyon Towee (3) Northern Cardinal
(4) Female Gila Woodpecker (5) Broad Tail Hummingbird (6) Canyon Towee
(7) Male Gila Woodpecker (8) Mourning Doves (9) Broad Tail Hummingbird

After we got home, we went over to the shower house. Just like at Picacho Peak State Park, the bathroom/showers are wonderful. The shower stalls are huge with a long tile bench for putting your stuff on and the shower itself is far enough away not to get your things wet. We gave it a 10; very nice.

We were getting frustrated with our long lens as ever since the automatic focus feature stopped working, we'd have a 25 percent chance of getting the photo in focus. It is very frustrating to take a nice picture but have it be out of focus. We decided to bite the bullet and get another lens. We looked up camera shops here in Tucson and decided on Gregs Camera Shop to visit and boy, what a marked difference from the experience we had at Ritz Camera in Chandler. The gentleman who waited on us was fabulous. He was interested in our needs and you could tell he knew his business. If ever in Tucson and you need a camera shop, we would highly recommend them. Needless to say, we bought a replacement lens and we are happy with the results. This lens has a 5 year warranty from Nikon so hopefully we will get better service out of this one.

We stopped for lunch at Famous Dave's BBQ (check off another location). I brought home half of my lunch and had it for dinner. John cleaned his plate so he was on his own for dinner. After lunch, we stopped at the market for milk, ice, vegetables and fruit but once we got inside Fry's Market, we were overcome by the fabulous grocery store. Truly, we almost were giddy with delight. Things we have not found for a couple of months were right there in front of us. How could we resist? We left with four bags of groceries and were so happy! Signed up for their Fry's card and saved almost $14. We will be back. This market must compare with a Nugget at home; it was amazing. Who knew you could get so excited grocery shopping!!!!

After putting away the groceries, we sat outside enjoying the beautiful afternoon. Pictures four through nine were taken from outside our rig this afternoon. We have two Broad Tail Hummingbird's that frequent the feeders. One is very laid back and will sit to eat while the other is very flighty and will zip away in the blink of an eye. We had one land up in the tree near us and we heard its voice. I never knew they had a voice; just always heard their wing beats. It was a very sweet sound but was rather loud for its size. Amazing.

Must say, we are enjoying our time in Tucson even though we haven't seen anything. Oh yes, the big news around here is that Tiger Woods is returning to golf at the Accenture Golf Tournament here in Tucson next week. The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain is hosting the championship and they aren't too far from us here in Catalina. If the cost isn't too expensive, we may have to take in a round.

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?

Catalina State Park near Tucson

We didn't have too far to go today so we took our time this morning. We stopped at the dump station on our way out and had to wait our turn. We wanted to make sure we had empty tanks and filled up our water tank as we figured we would be dry camping for a while.

We were on the road by 11 and drove less than 50 miles today. When we got to Catalina State Park, the Ranger told us that only a few sites were available in the non-electric loop. This park is Arizona's newest park and they do not accept reservations. We told him that was fine and he told us that if we were interested in moving to an electric site, he would let the Camp Host know. We told him we were. We proceeded to Loop A and were met by the Camp Host. She told us to select any site in the non-electric loop and to be ready to move by 8:30 tomorrow. We found this nice pull-thru site and didn't unhook since we will be moving to another site tomorrow.

We ate lunch and decided to take a walk around the park but first we had to meet the welcoming committee. We were greeted by two roadrunners. This is a picture of one of them. The one I was talking to just stood and listened to me; they definitely aren't afraid of humans. It was so darn cute. One of them was chasing down bugs and we heard the snap of his beak from several feet away. Soon they wandered off . . . we hope to see them again.

We decided to take a walk around the campground. We discovered that there are no bad campsites here at all. As we don't get to pick our site, it is nice to know that they are all very nice. We were on our way back to our site when we saw a Camp Host waiting in a golf cart. We were asked if we belonged to the Excel. We said we did, he said that there was an opening in the electric loop and they wanted us to move. Really??? We pulled in the slides, loaded up the chairs, raised up the levelers and we were on our way to Loop B.

We were escorted to our new site that is a pull-thru that is extremely long. Here is a shot of what our site looks like with the mountains behind. We definitely feel this has the "it" factor for us. Originally, we were only going to stay maybe 5 to 7 days but we signed up for the full two weeks. We are close to Tucson and even closer to groceries and other nice conveniences.

It didn't take us long to get all settled in. Even the MotoSat cooperated and locked on within 4 minutes. I couldn't believe it as it has been ages since it has locked on that quickly.

We just really like the view.

We have a large area between us and the site on our left. I told John that would be a good area to play ladder golf some time in the next two weeks.

The park has several hikes that we want to do and has a fair amount of roads for us to tool around on our bicycles. The bird feeders are out (bird seed and hummingbird) as is the bird bath. I told John he is a good nester. We also spotted our first hawk-a Cooper's Hawk while on our walk around the park. Yes, I think we are going to be happy here.