Tucson, Arizona

It was great to return to Tucson where I lived from 1990 – 1992 while I got an MBA from the University of Arizona.  But before we got to Tucson we paused in Peoria, AZ, home of the Seattle Mariners’ spring training facility and we took in a game!  Visiting Spring Training is SO fun because you can be so close to the action.  I wish I had gotten a picture of Will’s smile as we made our way to our first row seats.  We had a great afternoon watching the Mariners beat the Guardians, getting a smile from starting pitcher–Luis Castillo, seeing Ichiro up close, and enjoying the Arizona sunshine.  

Tucson was very much like I remember it but a LOT has changed in 35 years!  As Will mentioned, we stayed at the Tucson/Lazydays KOA, by far the best KOA we have ever stayed at.  It was hard not to just hang out at the campground.  It was nice to finally be stationary for a few days, we stayed March 3-7.

We spent a day at the Sonoran Desert museum.  The highlights of the day were seeing their live animal show where we saw a Gila Monster and a rattlesnake.  Then, there was some Stingray touching (Zina’s favorite), and walking through some amazing Desert landscape. After the museum we drove through the Saguaro National Park, just amazing unforgiving landscape over the hills.  It is amazing that people eventually tamed a lot of this land.  That night the kids went swimming even though it was only 61 degrees!

Wednesday we took some time to see the University of Arizona.  The places I remembered were where I remembered them though somewhat changed.  We visited the institute, a place I spent so much time when I was not in school.  We ate lunch at El Charro, a 100 year old restaurant.  They have the best salsa I have ever tasted.  A student in the entrepreneurship program a year ahead of me’s business plan was to bottle and sell their salsa.  It was as delicious as I remembered.  There was more swimming that afternoon though it was much warmer.

On Thursday we were supposed to move on but the forecast was for very high winds in our destination so we decided to stay another day, luckily easily arranged.  We used the extra time to head out to see Biosphere 2.  It is crazy to think of what they were attempting.  It is an amazing facility.  Research there continues though they are not going to lock anyone else in!  Their current research uses METER sensors and it was fun to see those in the informational video!