TUCSON, AZ 9-26-2017 PART I

This is the most beautiful KOA that we’ve decided to stay extra nights, five total.  There is a smoked bbq restaurant here on campus so we’ll walk there tonight for dinner.  We can have a cocktail before dinner and not worry about driving or calling a taxi!  Hurray!  This park has the biggest repair facility we have ever seen.  As we’ve learned, you don’t know the beast has a malfunction until you take it on the road, right?  There is a huge warehouse of parts and we found a bin latch we need.  Between that and the restaurant, all is well here in Tucson.

It’s always something, Jane.  I got up this morning to find a puddle of water behind the toilet about ½” deep.  Fortunately, it was fresh water from the supply line.  We mopped up and started fiddling with the toilet, wondering how we can deal with this till we get home, maybe turn the water pressure off and stuff towels behind it as we go along.  Rob figured out how to get the close-out panel off and we found the leak.  It was an easy disassembly and reassembly and, lo and behold, the KOA parts department had the correct valve!  A new, blueprint toilet valve, oh yay!  It doesn’t take much to delight two engineers!  It was a 15 minute job and we’re back to business, as it were. 

Beaver

Tortoise

Mmmm, I LOVE humans!
They are delicious!

Here in Tucson, there is a big conservatory, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  When I hear, “museum,” I usually think of dead stuff.  However, this is more of a sanctuary with a pleasant walk through trees, flowers, butterflies, birds, cacti and lots of animals like turtles, otters, beavers, fish, deer, long horn sheep, black bears, grey fox, ocelots and mountain lions.  The animals were not free, of course, but the environment was big and natural, no coops or cages.  We learned that some are rescue animals, injured on the job, so to speak.  One resident is a beautiful blue heron.  As a chick, he was captured and carried away by an eagle.  The eagle dropped him for some reason and a human saw this drama.  The chick was taken to a medical facility to try to fix a broken wing and foot bones.  They did not heal properly and the heron lives comfortably here as a permanent guest in protective custody. 

Blue heron with a malfunctioning right wing

Plan view of the blue heron

There were also snakes and spiders.  Rob paid a visit.  I waited outside.  The saguaro cactus is 75 years old before it begins to sprout arms.  It grows to be about as tall as a 4 story building and can weigh up to 7,000 pounds when it is fully grown.  It lives to be about 200 years old and the support structure is actually wood.  So the straight ones with no arms that we see here and there can be as old as 75 years!  They are majestic beasts!  It was an all-day affair including lunch at the pretty restaurant and, I will say, it isn’t unusual for us to miss about half the exhibits at a place this size but here, it was comfortable and easy to see almost everything.

Nice kitty, nice kitty...

Ocelot... looks like he may not eat humans.

Why is there a goat on my head?

Saguaro cacti of all ages