March 10 - 28, 2018:
Now that the 38 Dodge (my time machine) is safely back in a local storage garage, with about two weeks left at the campground, I must get serious about preparing the RV for another travel season. I’m installing the tow wiring, removed from the old Jeep, onto the new Jeep. I’m also installing a better battery hold down, flushing out the water heater tank, doing another roof cleaning and organizing the storage compartments. We are now able to remove some things we seldom use or don’t need from the RV and put them in storage here in Tucson.
Twinkles and I go to the Kevin Pakulis' “Sunday Sessions” with our friends Ronda and Joe when a man approaches me asking if I am Slick ? I was a little confused for a second as I never use the "Slick' handle. He is Chris (Jeepers) from Illinois who explains that he follows my RV travel blog, where he had heard about the “Sunday Sessions”, decided to check it out and then picked me out of the crowd. This has never happened before, Ronda and Joe and others at the campground who have heard about it are calling me “Almost Famous”, Thanks, Chris !!!
I've been trying to find time to get on route 10 in Tucson to take a couple of photos of some beautiful murals at an overpass, I finally did it. Arizona goes to great expense to beautify their roadways.
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The beauty of these murals is distracting
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| Works of art |
A few days later when I take the Dodge out of storage for a ride an RV follows me into the Lowes parking lot, jumps out and introduces himself to me as “Campervankevin”. Kevin is a RV’er who has a U-tube channel and as he travels around looks for subjects to video. When he saw my 38 Dodge with the “NJ to Tucson or Bust” sign on the rear, he knew there must be a story. We had a nice talk while he took a video with his cell phone. Possibly, I am becoming famous ? Actually all I have to do is stay on the road with that car, another trip may be in the future.
As I watch his You Tube channel I am thinking, why am I doing a blog, Kevin has 10,000 views on everything he puts up and is making money doing this. Something to think about ?
On the ride I had taken the Dodge to the amazingly photogenic “Mission San Xavier del Bac” and then to the historic Barrio Viejo neiborhood of downtown Tucson where I posed the car in front of several old adobe structures. I love this area of Tucson, its magical !
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A cactus wren sitting on a Saguaro
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The cactus garden in front of the Mission is pretty special too !
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| Barrio Viejo mural |
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Parked in front of the much photographed old Elysian Market
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| Old historic theater building |
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| It feels right in this neighborhood |
The Thursday night music at “Tap and Bottle” has become another favorite place for me, this time it was to see Leila Lopez. She has a unique and most interesting vocal and guitar playing style and the accompanying young violin player was also great. I can’t decide if her vocals are a foreign accent, an unusual vocal style or both, but I love her sound, it’s beautiful. As I sat at the end of the bar, the same two old guys who were there on my last visit showed up and we joked about this being the old guys corner. Not sure this is funny, more likely sad ? I return the following Thursday for a CD release show by the Carnivalaros who are another great local band. The Tap and Bottle has an amazing selection of craft beers, is highly rated, but I find it somewhat annoying. I’m not really needing a trendy, expensive beer that I usually don’t like, I’d just as soon have a Coors Light or a Budweiser.
http://www.carnivaleros.com
https://www.leilalopezsongs.com/bio
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| Great looking CD images |
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| The Carnivaleros |
I also visit for the first time the “Exo Roast” which is a trendy coffee house with a bar and music room in the rear. Exo Roast is also promoting various Mescal drinks, which are becoming very popular. They have one of Tucson’s most notorious musician, Billy Sedlmayr opening for noted author and musician Willy Vlautin. It was a great show, most interesting. I had never heard of this author before, this was a new book promotion tour and I ended up buying one of his previous books, which had received rave reviews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Vlautin
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It's an interesting read for sure
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I’m very tired of seeing nothing but photos of dogs in various RV blogs, it’s time for cat lovers to stand up and promote their cats. So a few photos of our cat Alice, a far superior pet for the RV lifestyle. Alice was looking pretty sad when we brought her home from the shelter but she has flowered into a beautiful, loving cat. She wakes us in the morning (like an alarm clock), doesn’t need to walked, doesn’t bark, is clean (spends hours grooming herself), sleeps on the bed without taking over half of it, can be left alone in the RV without a problem and doesn’t need to play silly games. If you’re worried about protection, get a gun.
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| The amazing Alice |
Twinkles and I take a hike from the 36th street trailhead to the rear of our house. One of the things that sold us on this house, was the hiking access right from our rear gate. It connects to a network of trails that go for miles into Tucson Mountain Park and beyond.
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The 36 street trailhead leads up to this decorated old Stone House
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We followed a ridge line for part of the way, our house is
somewhere behind that pointy hill to the right
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This view was particularly interesting
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| After the recent rains, the desert has recovered and is green again |
I am a dummy, that’s what Twinkles said, (actually she said much worse), after my computer would not re start after attempting to upgrade the operating system to “High Sierra. I have read many times about the dangers of not back up the computer, how it’s not
if the hard drive will fail, but
when the hard drive will fail. I wanted to take the computer to the Apple Store in Tucson, but it is extremely hard to get an appointment, so we went to the Geek Squad at Best Buy where they told us they us they were not authorized to repair Macs, imagine that ?. The tech guy however, was very helpful and told us that if we couldn't get into the Apple Store there was an apple authorized repair shop called “Simutec”. A call to Simutec told us to bring it right over and drop it off. A few hours later, (I expected nothing for days), they called back to advise that the Hard Drive had failed and they gave us several replacement options and a cost to attempt recovery of files on the failed hard drive. On the following day that called again to advise that the computer was done, the file recovery was successful and it was ready to pick up. As I picked it up and the counter man looked up the repair action and the cost, he said
ouch !, but at least he didn’t laugh or scold me about it, I expect they deal with lots of dummies ? I am presently doing a back up with Time Machine as I write this. Nothing is easy, I tend to hate these evil, but wonderful machines.
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| The cause of all my pain |
This is a busy time in the campground with many people leaving to head back home, others preparing their rigs to leave and others stopping here while traveling through. Lots of goodbyes this month including ourselves on the March 29th.
We don’t have much of a travel plan this year since we are going to have to return to Tucson in either late May or June to move into our house. I will then return to New Jersey to get the rest of our stuff out of storage and return, another long road trip for me. As a result, we will be in Tucson to see the monsoon season, the lightning storms and potential flash flooding and water briefly flowing in the Santa Cruz River. After getting the house established, we may take the RV out for a fall tour to the Grand Canyon area. I'm also thinking about another 38 Dodge tour, it was sorta fun.
Don't forget to check other RV'ers at :
hitchupandgo.com
In am thrilled to be going on the road again, it's been way too long in one place for me !
Twinkles and Slick
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