January 29, 2005 - Drive to Tucson, Arizona

We departed Demmings shortly after 9 and continued west on I-10 through the desert toward Tucson. The desert was, however, much more vegetated than in areas further north like the stretch between Flagstaff, Arizona, and Albuquerque, New Mexico that we drove on Wanderung 3. This desert, I later learned, was the northern section of the Sonoran desert, which has a slightly wetter ecology with a pretty continuous cover of sagebrush and cacti. Some kind of grass or sedge grew in patches and that softened the appearance of the dessert quite a bit. Of course, where those grasses could not grow the earth was bare between the plants, but all in all I found it to be a pleasant desert, the type maybe I could get used to in time.

We drove over a couple of mountain passes along the way, one of which had a set of up thrust rock formations that reminded me a bit of the "Garden of the Gods" area of Colorado that we saw on Wanderung 3. It was, however, not developed or advertised in any way. The crossing of the Continental Divide, which I had rather dreaded due to my experiences towing the trailer across it in the northwest during Wanderung 6, was a complete non-event. The divide was 4900 feet high but was in a plain that was so flat that we could not have said where exactly the divide was if the Department of Transportation had not put up a sign about it. We arrived at Rob and Debbie's place in the middle of the afternoon and chatted with Rob until Debbie returned with their son Karl from a soccer game. We had a tour of their nice new house, which is situated on a small knoll between the mountains to the north and the city of Tucson proper. That location gave nice views in every direction. The air was so clear that during the day the mountains to the north kind of stared in through the windows on that side, and at night the city lights of Tucson gleamed in the darkness to the south like diamonds strewn across a sheet of black velvet.

The house itself was quite large with a big kitchen with nice granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, and so forth. There was also a swimming pool out back, but best of all it had a great mother-in-law suite with a separate entrance that had been built into the basement. We were delighted to move in for a couple of days, especially since the trailer was parked out in front but off on the shoulder enough that it was canted over at an angle. We grabbed our toiletries and some clothes from the trailer and moved right in for the night.