April 16, 2003 - Branson, MO, - 4 (2/14-21/03 - Saguaro National Park, Tucson, AZ, & San Antonio River Walk, San Antonio, TX)
Still catching up it looks like.
We'd driven to the East side of Tucson, into the Saguaro National Park. Amazing what having a Golden Age Passport will do for our interest in any kind of a park. It's a lifetime passport/card issued to anybody 62 or older (cost $10), and will give free access to Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps of Engineers, Tennessee Valley Authority, National Park Service or Forest Service land. Some exceptions are when a private company is acting as concessionaire, like the BLM land we stay in while at Quartzsite. That we have to pay for, but it entitles us to free water and dump station use. The little walk I'm standing on was just that. A little loop that went into the desert and back out. We did notice some Javelina had come by earlier for a quick snack. They must be tough little critters, to just take a bite out of the cactus like this.
Remember seeing the holes in the Saguaro cactus? Well, here's the guy responsible for them. This woodpecker will make the hole, use it for a season and abandon it to all kinds of other critters who will use it from then on. And, of course, even in the desert there's some flowers that Barb has to take pictures of.
With roads like these, a Jeep really isn't a necessity. We were glad it was a one-way road though. And then the wind came up and the clouds began to form, and that black one was a tad ominous to us.
This is just a series of strange barrel cactus, and one that simply laid over to die. There are all kinds of reasons for the odd shapes. Some are simply the result of cold weather, some the result of a genetic mutation, and some due to animal contact.
Barb was running around with the camera while I was contemplating the contrasts, trying to make some sort of sense of it all. Hiker turned philosopher if you will. There's a Saguaro full of holes, frost damage, and still growing, and an ocotillo beginning to bloom
Well, it had been a long time since we'd been rained out of a picnic! Particularly in the desert. The shot on the left was out my side window, and then through the windshield you can see the table and benches where we had started our lunch. There's a canopy over the table, but the wind was strong enough to bring all the heavy rain in to us, so we finished up quick and headed for the Jeep. Rained off and on most the rest of the day, but didn't stop us from poking around.
The place was full of odd barrel cactus. This was our first, and so far only 3 headed cactus.
We were on our way down the highway, Barb in the Jeep and me driving the truck, when we spotted this huge roadrunner at a rest stop. Made out of metal of some kind, no plaque and no explanation. Just a beautiful piece of work. (Roadrunners are around us in Arizona, Texas, and Missouri, but they are sure hard to find.) We're on our way to Boerne, TX, for the Medium Duty Truck rally. We stayed for a few days at the Lake Medina TTN preserve between Bandera Falls and Pipe Creek. A bit northwest of San Antonio. These bucks are a bit early with the sparring as this is February and the rut doesn't usually start until mid to late fall. But they were still hard at it.
They kept pushing each other around for quiet a spell, and then something more important distracted them. It wasn't us, as they're looking away from us. The deer in this place really paid almost no attention to us.
Dean and Bettye Kennedy are the grandparents of a niece of mine. They're the kind of people who invite you to come over for a snack on your way through town, and you end up spending the night in their RV parked alongside the house so you can leave early in the morning without disturbing anybody. They have a Mountain Aire motorhome built the same year as our trailer with the same color scheme that we have. We first got to know them in Gillette, WY, at a Newmar rally. They'd taken us under their wing and showed us the ropes. Whenever we'd go out to dinner or to a display on the grounds of the rally, they'd be introducing us to their other friends. As a matter of fact, I'll blame my "SmarTire" on him. That's a device that has senders inside all my inside tires that sends signals to a receiver on my windshield, telling me the tire pressures and temperatures. It has an alarm system to sound a buzzer and flash a red light when either of those two are out of the pre-set specifications. Great gadget and has saved at least one tire, and gave me warning about another about to blow out so I could stop before it did any damage to the trailer. We've been blessed by knowing these people. Dean and Bettye have been very active in the Newmar Kountry Klub for many years, and had served as officers in the local chapter here in San Antonio. My late brother Bill had more respect for Dean than any other man he knew, and Barb and I consider it a privilege to know them as well. We're obviously taking the boat ride along the River Walk in downtown San Antonio. And it was a good thing Dean was driving. We'd never have been able to find as good a parking place as they did on the couple of occasions we visited the River Walk with them.
This is one tough tree! No wimpy building foundation is going to stop it from growing where it wants to! And then I had to take a picture of the kids peaking through the bridge taking pictures of us.
The lunch was great. Both the food and the company. The mariachi band was a bit too up close and personal for us maybe. I enjoyed it, but as I recall I'd left my hearing aids at home that day! It was loud, but good music anyway. The two pictures without date and time stamps were taken by Dean and he was kind enough to send them to me. The contrast between his camera and mine, as well as the difference of rain verses sunshine is obvious. Thanks Dean and Bettye for everything. You're great people.
Posing by a traditional San Antonio poster. Every year the San Antonio Conservation Society puts these out. This one is titled "A Night In Old San Antonio" and at the bottom it says, "San Antonio Conservation Society April 23, 24, 25, 26, - 1985". They're considered collectible items. And along with the jackrabbit, we're gone for now.