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Our first visit to Tucson was really a whistle-stop. After crossing the border from Mexico, we had visited Bisbee and Tombstone then driven to Tucson to meet up with the son of one of Gerry's cousins. Before driving up to Steve's house, we spent a couple of hours near the university but that is all.

The Kazen Family

The Kazen Family

Our second visit, however, was a bit like our stay in Phoenix . It just kept getting extended. It was no coincidence of course that the numerous extensions were for the same reason as in Phoenix. We were still trying to get Gerry's DVD-writer fixed. We won't bore you with the details of that here, except to say that in the end it did get fixed, although we are still not sure what the original problem was and so are constantly afraid that it will re-occur.

Modern Tucson

Modern Tucson

Modern Tucson

In the two weeks we were there, we did get acquainted with lots of different things in and around Tucson. Most notable were the various parks in and around Tucson where we hiked and got hot and the trips south of town to see the mission churches established by Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino in the mid-1600's and the Praesidio at Tubac, the first European settlement on the territory of what is now the United States.

Spanish Colonial Tucson

Spanish Colonial Tucson

We spent a very pleasant day wandering around the old center of town looking at old-style Spanish architecture, leavened with one or two modern pieces. Just before lunch that day we came across the lovely Sosa-Cabrillo-Fremont house, which was built by the Sosa family, sold to and lived in principally by the Cabrillo family, and rented briefly to John Charles Fremont, governor of the Arizona territory from 1878 to 1883. When the house was first acquired by the State of Arizona, it was given the name Fremont House, in honor of the governor. However, descendents of the two Mexican-Spanish families that had built and lived in the house, lobbied for a change in the name to acknowledge the role their families had played in the long history of the house. Even lunch was in a restored Spanish style house, with terracotta tile floors, low ceilings, and thick stone walls that kept it well-insulated from the desert heat. Our walking tour of the city's architecture continued in the afternoon taking in the relatively new music center, with its ugly sixties architecture.

Colonial Tucson

Colonial Tucson

We also wandered around the campus of the University of Arizona a couple of times and spent an afternoon at the museum there. We especially liked the campus bookstore where we spent several hours and came away with a Spanish-English dictionary for our impending trip to Mexico. We already had our Lonely Planet Mexico, and while in Tucson also acquired a pocket electronic dictionary from Radio Shack, but we thought that as we'd be trying to read a lot in Spanish we should have a little better dictionary. As it turned out we didn't necessarily make the best choice, because we later found that the dictionary was too slanted towards the Spanish of Spain and the English of Britain.

University of Arizona

University of Arizona

We did quite a bit of shopping at Walmart. Jan added one or two more pieces of warm-weather clothing to her wardrobe. Although Tucson is a few degrees cooler than Phoenix, going from 110 to 100 isn't a lot cooler and we didn't expect northern Mexico to be any better. Gerry also invested in an electrical inverter so that in emergencies he could charge his camera and even perhaps the computer from the car battery. And finally he bought a multi-card reader for his fujitsu notebook, not really knowing what he would use it for, but knowing it would turn out to be useful somehow! Our readers would not believe either the volume or weight that electronic "stuff" takes up in our luggage.

Fairfield Inn

Time to say goodbye

And last but not least, we celebrated Jan's birthday. This was supposed to take place on a Mexican beach, but instead we went out for a nice dinner and moved from a 2-star hotel to a 3-star where we were delighted to find that for once we had a fridge in our room. Since we almost always eat two meals a day in the room — breakfast and dinner — you can imagine how useful a fridge can be.