Tucson

First cactus of the trip!

We had a little get-away to the desert. My girl had never been to the American southwest, which I consider one of the most exotic locales around - in many ways, more exotic than Europe. Certainly it's more different in its physical geography.

Sheer exuberance by my reserved girl!

We mostly had a great time. Seeing the cactus, and being outside in relative warmth (50s and 60s) was terrific. The "mostly" comes because my girl got sick towards the end, and so spent one day rotating between the bathroom and bed, and the trip home suffering from plugged and painful ears. I was in rude and wonderful health, and so had a better time. However, since we shared a bed some of the time, I feel a clock ticking and feel resistance is futile. So happy my first day back is a snow day - I'm catching up on my email, and doing laundry, and reading and commenting on an important paper. This is a little break from work.

This was the kind of low-key, low ambition, short getaway I really like. We stayed in an AirBnB in a very walkable old neighborhood in Tucson, and did one big thing each day - but only one. The rest of the time we chilled in the sunshine,  read books, walked, and ate locally.  I was raised to try to maximize a vacation ("the sights won't see themselves!"), and this chiller version is more to my liking. Never-the-less, I still got in enough physical challenges - morning limber-up exercises, many many steps - to not feel like a slug. Enough time outdoors moving to sleep well.

Saw a lot of these signs

So for the travelogue: Tuscon is a lovely small walkable college town surrounded by extensive suburban sprawl, with desert and mountains and national and state parks on every side. A car is really essential for reaching the parks and hikes. We ate casually but very well, at local coffee, sandwich, pizza, and (mostly) taco shops, all walking distance from our place. (The one day we'd planned a nicer restaurant was the day my girl wasn't eating anything.)  The weather was very nice - it poured the night we arrived, but then pretty much each day dawned around freezing and rose to fifties or sixties with brilliant sunshine. When we were moving, a light fleece was good. We could sit still in the sheltered courtyard of our place and soak up rays while reading.

Was so great to see them.

The first day was desert-immersion. We stopped on our way out of town at a pull off to view our first cactus close up. The rest of the day was spent at the Arizona-Senora Desert Museum, a combo zoo-botanical garden focused on local flora and fauna. We were tour-guided there by casual friends of mine from the sailing club, who used to split their time between summers on their boat in Maryland, and winters down there in an RV. For the past few years they've been full time RV'ers, and are now looking to settle down full time in an apartment in Tucson (but keeping the RV for road trips). The perfect native (almost) guides, as they have been volunteering at the parks for years.  And they invited us to their place to enjoy hospitality and marvel at their tiny house. It's funny how excited they are at buying furniture to furnish their two-bedroom apartment! And, how buying furniture and running electronics have changed in the 15 years they have been at sea or on the road. Do they need cable TV or should they just stream? They haven't done much of either ever, since they have been mostly remote without services.

Very well-trodden trails

We did hiking in different parks on our own the other days. They day my girl was sick I hovered helplessly but sympathetically, and as she started to recover I ventured on a series of walks around town - scoring in total the most number of fitbit steps in one day since last April! Just walking and looking is one of my favorite things ever.

The last day was a daytime drive to Phoenix (cheaper flights), with a brief stop at "Biosphere 2" where, in the 1990s, folks tried to live sealed off completely from earth's atmosphere and supplies, pretending to be on another planet. (The story is interesting, but the habitat didn't click with us. Too crowded, too cranky, too far still to go.)

Colors were vivid and always-changing

That night we went to the botanical garden where there was a unique art installation - seven different light-and-sound events that used the plants, and even a whole hillside, as the canvas for painting with colored lights. I have a gazillion pictures, and will try to limit myself to just a few representative ones. We spent a couple of hours just gazing and taking it in.

Imagine this pulsing through the colors of the rainbow with atonal music 

It looked like sea-anemones, almost like snorkeling. Cactus!