Winter in Tucson

January 2-7, 2015:

New Years day was very wintery with snow and ice on the desert landscape and surrounding mountains.  It was actually quite beautiful and I went out on a couple of photo hikes to appreciate these unusual conditions.  There is nothing like a brisk cold walk in the desert in the early morning.

View of the mountains in the distance

Melting snow on a  Saguaro

Snow covered Cholla's

Snow scene

The weather continues to be weird this year.  We have had several cold rainy days, and several days with low temperatures in the mid 20's.  It has been much colder that anything last year with the high today to be only 45 degrees. 

The classic Paul Newman film, the "Hustler" was on TV last night, it truly was a great movie.  It brings back memories of teen age years in my friend Gary Tindall's basement spent shooting pool for hours and hours on the old regulation size slate table.  I believe it was about the time frame of the movie and we all wanted to be like "fast Eddie".

Sunday was a sunny, warming day, which we enjoyed by taking a 6 mile hike on an excellent trail in Tucson Mountain Park.

View from the trail with mountains in distance

Trail view

I go to Boondocks Lounge Monday evening to see the Byron Dean trio play.  I saw him play at the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame show and was very impressed.  He is a great guitar player who plays there every Monday 6 - 8 and seems to have a dedicated fan base who show up very week to eat, dance and party.  His wife plays bass guitar in the trio and is quite an inspirational story.  She came to the US from Japan for 10 months as a foreign exchange student when she was 16 years old.  She latter returned to the US in 1994, for the love of rock music.  She played several musical instruments, went to Pima Community College, then the University of Arizona and started playing in local bands.  She met Bryon Dean in 1998 and eventually they became married. She has now been in the US for 20 years, is fluent in English, a college graduate and a professional musician.  The Bryan Dean trio in 2010 represented southern Arizona at the International Blues challenge in Memphis, TN and made it to the semi finals.

Bryan Dean trio

Wish I could have seen Magic Slim (RIP)
play at Bonndock's Lounge

I am heading out for a solo adventure, taking a break from the RV, (Twinkles will hold down the fort), on January 8th to visit my daughter Jessica in Ft. Myers, Florida.  I will then fly to Newark, NJ on the 15th to visit my son in Hightstown, New Jersey and return to Tucson on the 25th.  I feel a need to see the grandkids before they are all grown up.  I expect to continue the blog during this trip, maybe, it should be an interesting change of scenery and pace. Hope I can remember how to drive New Jersey style again, but I can ease back into it in at Ft. Myers. 

There has been some thought put into where to travel this year.  The current concept is to head east into New Mexico and Texas, then head north into Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota.  That's the extent of the plan, we'll just play it by ear after that ?

Looking forward,

Twinkles and Slick