We left Sedona on the morning of Wednesday 19^th November and for the first time in the 6 months we have been on the road I drove the RV so John could work in the back. I think John’s refusal of my offers to drive are due to the fact that he wants to get home and claim to have driven all of the 20, 25 or 30 thousand miles we will have done by then. Well I hope that’s what it is and not that he just doesn’t enjoy my driving!! I am most definitely navigator and guide book reader and he is the chauffeur!!

 

Anyway, we had to get the RV back by 11am so we set off early. Our plans were scuppered due to a horrific crash just outside of Phoenix complete with helicopter in the middle of road – truly horrible. We got to Tucson and picked up the hire car I had booked for the 6 days the kids and I would be on our own in Tubac before Mum and Graham were due to arrive. We were hacked off at the extortionate charging; $22 per day for the car then $28 per day for the insurance. Curse them!!

 

We dropped the RV off (not too sad to wave it goodbye) and were headed to Tubac when the wonderful Motorwerks garage once again came to our rescue and offered their loan car to me to use for a few days. With Thanksgiving the following week they said I could keep it until mum and Graham arrive with their huge hire car which we will use till they depart. This garage is fantastic!! If you ever find yourself in need of a mechanic in Tucson specialising in Porsches and Mercedes (which I appreciate might not be too often) then I can’t recommend them highly enough!!

 

It was lovely to be back in the house. As I mentioned before Dad and Carol have filled it with some beautiful and some down right crazy art! Here is a selection of some of my favourites!

        

So we were well and truly back in the sunshine. Here in Southern Arizona the temperature is a fairly reliable 25-30 degrees each day. Bliss!! The 4 of us had 3 nights here all together before John had to fly back to the UK. Nothing very exciting to report other than an awful lot of skate park action. John is now very much ‘back on his board’ and the kids are soooooo impressed with his “skills”. I am the official photographer obviously and spend hours filming them so they can look back over the footage for areas of improvement.

  

We had been counting down to the release of Mockingjay Part 1, scheduled for the day John was due to fly home. So the kids and I had grudgingly promised him we wouldn’t see it without him and would wait for him to come back so we could all go together. However, Dumb and Dumber Too, was out and we all wanted to see that. So we headed to the little local cinema to get our tickets only to discover that they had a preview of Mockingjay on the same night. So we did 2 films back to back (well aside from a quick 2 hour intermission giving just enough time to grab a pizza).

 

The cinema is tiny and in a place called Green Valley where the average age must be 80.   Thankfully the residents of Green Valley obviously weren’t interested in seeing this sequel and so it was just us and 2 other couples in the auditorium. The first Dumb and Dumber movie was hilarious and probably only contained 1 or 2 scenes that were perhaps not that appropriate for kids. Whereas the sequel was completely outrageous and probably only had 1 or 2 scenes that WERE suitable for a 10 and 8 year old. Hopefully much of the meaning went over their heads. But John and I were slumped down in our seats hiding our faces in shame from the 2 other couples looking very accusingly over at us as we all left the cinema!!

 

On Friday we headed to Tucson to return the overpriced hire car and collect the loan car; a white 19 year old Mercedes which I loved immediately   A picture of Retro loveliness complete with built in Cassette holders.   Remember those??!?  Very sad to see Frankie looking so empty and unloved!!

 

Our last supper was at Wisdom’s just down the road, delicious Mexican food and margaritas. And so it was Saturday 22^nd came too quickly. 4 very sad looking people sat at Tucson airport saying our goodbyes. Just 3 weeks till we’d be there to meet John off his return flight but it felt like a very very long time stretching out ahead of us all.

     

The kids and I then had 5 very strange quiet days on our own in the house at Tubac waiting for Mum and Graham to arrive. They were making their way to us via Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and then Sedona and we expected them on Thanksgiving Day. Tubac sells itself as the town where ‘Art and History meet’. It’s a little town 30 miles south of Tucson and 10 miles north of Nogales on the border with Mexico. With a population of about 1000 mostly made up of retired artists and snow birds. The town is made up of streets of eclectic shops selling Mexican art and lots of art galleries. However, up the road are the towns of Green Valley (as previously mentioned average age 90 – we’d had to help an old man who’d taken a fall outside Pizza Hut the last time we were there) and Sahuarita which is a new town full of young families and it is there that we had found the skatepark and spent most of our time hanging out.  The kids also loved having all their stuff out of the van (and littered all over the floor of their bedroom) and spent hours playing lego.

 

On Monday 24th Dad had arranged a days bird watching for me and the kids in Patagonia with a friend of his. So we met Matt at Patons Yard, a bird watching reserve in what was the back garden of a couple called the Patons. They had countless bird feeders in their garden years ago and so were attracting a huge variety and number of birds. Word got out and people starting hanging over their fences to watch the birds, at which stage this lovely couple opened up their garden to the public. It is now known as a hummngibird Haven and it was those that William and Charlie were most excited to see.

    

It was one of those days when your kids just blow you away. I literally stood open mouthed as I watchd Will chat to Matt (renowned Arizona birding guide) about the birds he knows, was seeing and was interested in. We knew he had started to get interested in birds over the last few months and spends hours reading his guide books etc. and in fact John had upgraded Will’s binoculars a few weeks back. But I was completely blown away by how knowledbale he was. Matt seemed genuinely impressed. We had a great afternoon spotting lots of birds (William will have to update you on what we actually saw) and both the boys were beautfifully behaved and interested and interesting companions. So much so that Matt has asked William to participate in his Christmas Bird Count in a few weeks time as he believes he will be a real asset to the group – how cool is that!!

 

We had dinner at a great cowboy grill Wagon Wheel (Pappy’s favourite) before heading out owl spotting. Sadly we saw no owls but the night skies more than made up for it. Thanks to a local ordinance that strictly limits artificial-light pollution, Tucson supposedly has the darkest night skies of any city its size in the country. I truly have never seen as many stars. (Talking of stars, I heard a great story that made me chuckle. So apparently after the 1994 earthquake killed the power in Los Angeles, emergency call centers were inundated with panicked reports of a strange, glowing cloud in the sky. Turned out to be the Milky Way. Love it!!!)

 

Anyway, back to the freezing cold and sadly owl-less evening we were delighted to see a javelina ran across the road in front of us which cheered us all up. Then unfortunately on our way out of town I was stopped by police! William had shouted at me for being in the wrong lane (what I now know was the overtaking lane in the middle of the road) so I’d sort of swerved into the right lane only to see flashing lights in my rear view mirror. The very charming marshall asked me if I’d been drinking, which I had not and then politely informed me that you can’t cross a solid line blah blah blah. Absolutely typical – John has driven 15,000 miles over the last 6 months and we’ve had absolutely no run ins with the law and I’m left on my own for 2 days and look what happens! Not sure I will live that one down!!

 

We all enjoyed having a few ‘down days’, although in truth it was very strange being in a house on our own, John so far away and working (sending us photos of things we are missing from home – Costa and rugby – somehow John managed to get to an England game) and not really having anything specific to do or see. We didn’t want to visit too much in the area as we wanted to save all that for when Mum and Graham arrived.

  

One weird thing was having TV again. We’ve not had TV for 6 months. We have a little TV with a built in DVD player and we brought close to 200 DVD’s with us (all in little portable cases I hasten to add – NOT in their boxes which would take up a crazy amount of room in our little cupboards. In the interest of how much screen time we would actually indulge in while on the road we have kept a note of how many films we have watched. The total stood at 19 films before we arrived in Tubac. Well we have now significantly upped that total. The kids immediately plugged themselves back into TV and of course are now being bombarded by the obscene amount of advertisements.

 

All the telly adverts suddenly reminded us that Christmas is just around the corner. Being here in sunny Arizona it couldn’t feel less Christmassy so we hadn’t given it much thought honestly. Now I was suddenly reminded of all the things I’m NOT doing. No present buying, no writing Christmas cards, no food shopping, menu planning, parcel posting, nativity performances (the kids not me), Christmas fayres etc etc. Quite liberating really!!

We got our shopping done for Thanksgiving supper, which included a free turkey from Safeway courtesy of my brilliant club card. Funny story about that… a few weeks back I was at the checkout and the cashier asked me if I had a club card. Assuming that it would be like in the UK where you ‘earn’ points to use at a later date I turned to the woman behind me and said “I don’t. Do you?” She looked a little affronted and mumbled yes so I said something like “Go ahead and use it then”. She handed it over to the cashier who swiped it and my bill went down by $35!! I was sooooo embarrassed – turns out their club card gives you discounts off the bill immediately and there was me thinking I was giving her extra points not getting discounts on my bill. No wonder she thought me so rude demanding to use hers

 

Anyway, the free turkey was on the menu for the following day. Mum and Graham were due to arrive in time for Thanksgiving early supper. We had seen posters around Tubac for the Turkey Trot due to take place early that morning. So we joined about 150 Tubac residents on a 5k trot around town. It was great fun and we met some lovely people en-route.

We were so very excited about seeing Mum and Graham and looking forward to spending a couple of weeks with them!!