Thursday - Sunday, April 3 - 6, 2014 (Tucson, AZ)

The wind died down so it was a good day to travel to Tucson.  We did go ahead and go to our Walk away the Lbs class so we got a bit later start than we normally do, which was OK since Tucson was just over a hour down the road.

The drive down was pretty, the desert was definitely getting "greener" with a lot more cactus and saguaro's.  I can see why people had commented that the desert was prettier here.

As we got closer to Tucson, we definitely noticed the increase in traffic.  We are not big fans of traffic, especially when pulling the 5er.  When we got to the gate house of our next rv park, it was sure a tight squeeze.  The office was a ways from the gate house and we drove down this pretty avenue of palm trees and flowers and tons and I mean tons of park models.  I wonder where the rv's are parked? 

We got to the office and checked in for 5 days.  This park honors the Passport America rate which is 50% off the daily rate for 5 days but even at that, we are paying almost $30/day.  Yikes, wouldn't want to stay here without some sort of discount.  It's a much older park than we were at in Lake Havasu or Yuma though they do have a lot of activities. 

We are in the pet section with a pull through site.  This is the first time we've come across this type of configuration for a pull through site.  The sites are set up in blocks and an rv is parked on each side of the square with a common area in the center.  In this case, it is green grass and a couple trees.  It is nice to be around grass instead of gravel.

side view of our site

looking into the common area

We didn't do much the rest of the afternoon other than sit outside in our recliners and read.

Friday

They don't have Walk away the Lbs here, so we went to their fitness center and did a work out.  Sure am missing our walk away the lbs class.  We did check yesterday to see if we could use the rec room which has a tv/dvd player but were told that the room was already scheduled for an activity.  Oh well.....

Two things that we are scheduled for is to have an "inspection" of our rv for an extended warranty that we have decided to purchase.  We let the company know that we were here for 5 days and they are going to try and schedule an inspector while we are here but no word today from anyone. 

The other thing that we have planned is to tour another of the Robson facilities, this one is called Saddlebrooke Ranch.  So we decided that we would do that today.  This community is north of Tucson and what we thought would take 30 minutes to drive took 60 minutes.  We had to travel on Oracle Rd which was full of traffic lights for miles and apparently this is the only road.   Hmmmm that's a big negative in our book.

Once we finally arrived and got out of the truck, the air was very fragrant with some blooming trees so that started getting us in the right frame of mind.  We met with Terry, another really nice and laid back sales person; she said her "piece" and then turned us loose to look through the model homes.  Now this is the part that we both really enjoy.  They did have some different models from Robson Ranch so it wasn't all a "repeat".  This is a much newer community and there are not as many homes built yet, so they did not have a full restaurant, just a bistro cafe.  So after our tour of the model homes, we were treated to yet another "free" lunch overlooking the pool area.  The pool here is amazing, it's huge and incorporates a lap pool, a resistance channel (so you can swim or walk against a current) and a beach type area.  The climate is a lot cooler in the winter than Lake Havasu or even Casa Grande and the summers don't get nearly so hot.  The air and elevation felt really similar to Bend which we both liked.  It was a nice resort though the prices here reflected the proximity to Tucson.  The same house at Robson Ranch was approximately $20,000 cheaper than the same model here at Saddlebrooke.  It was fun looking and we enjoyed our day, just not the drive back through all the traffic to our 5er. 

The park was having it's end of season dance in their auditorium at 6:00 p.m. so we decided to check it out.  The music was provided by a DJ and he was pretty good.  When we walked in they were having a contest to guess which movie the music he was playing was from.  Rich knew the answer and was making his way to the DJ but someone else beat him.  So the next time the DJ announced the contest, Rich was prepared and didn't waste anytime making it to the DJ with the correct answer and for his efforts, he won one of those small one drink bottles of wine which he gave to me to me to drink.  =)  I have to say that we had a really good time at this dance.  The dance floor was huge and the DJ played a variety of music most of which we could dance to which made it fun.  They did do a couple of line dances and one of them looked familar enough that I almost tried it but it looked like they had added a couple steps I wasn't used to, so by the time I got it figured out, the dance was pretty much finished.  We stayed until about 8:30 and the crowd was definitely thinning out, I think the dance actually ended at 9:00 p.m.  While we were sitting at the dance, we had three different ladies come up and introduce themselves and talk about the park.  Apparently the people that winter here at this park really love it.  One lady had been coming for over 20 years. 

Saturday

Today we didn't have much on the agenda other than to go to Costco and get a few more items that we didn't find in the Costco at Indio.  Since we are not big into crowds and traffic, we didn't have anything else planned and our recliners and books looked pretty good.

Sunday

Today we attended the Calvary Chapel, west campus.  We enjoyed the service and the worship music very much.  I feel for the pastor though, they have another campus and each campus has two services and the pastor preaches at all of them.  They have the services timed so that he can drive back and forth, it must be exhausting for him.  It was a big church and for Easter Sunday they meet in the Tucson auditorium and combine both campuses and only have one service.  This Easter they had the worship group - Newsboys (they are a group you hear on the Christian radio stations) singing at their service.  We'd like to hear them but won't still be in the area by Easter.  

After church and lunch we took a walk around the park.  There are tons of park models and we happened upon two Open Houses, so of course we had to look.  I see why people go the park model route, as they are a pretty inexpensive way to have a vacation house in a nice warm climate.  Not sure I'd want to invest in this park, most of the park models are pretty old and it doesn't appear that you own the site, it looks like you rent the site the park model sits on.  

I spent a couple hours at the pool sunbathing and reading, though it got pretty windy this afternoon.  

While we were eating dinner, the sprinklers came on to water the grass and with the wind the mist drifted onto the 5er.  The water down here is very hard and leaves water spots, so as soon as the sprinklers stopped, Rich and I went out and wiped down the side of the 5er.  No sooner had we got back inside the sprinklers came on again.....what's up with that?  So once again, after they stopped, we went back out and wiped down the 5er again.  Luckily the water didn't come back on again.

Not sure what we have planned for tomorrow.  Hopefully we'll hear from the inspector since we plan to leave on Tuesday.

When we leave our park, this is the view that is along side the road.  There are tons of saguaro cactus in this area.

More saguaros, you can see that the cactus are right at the edge of town.