Sabino Canyon

Sabino Canyon is a beautiful place. It is a Federal Recreation Area and our RV is parked amongst the assorted Cacti of the Sonoran Desert. Not a single day goes by without wildlife of some kind appearing. White-tail deer, Gambril’s quail, desert cotton-tail rabbits, and assorted lizards seem to be every where. Tucson weather is awesome. There was one day of winter where we had temps during the day in the 50s but most days we see 80s and 90s. In 1 1/2 months we’ve seen rain twice with not enough either time to make anything wet.

We are volunteers at the Sabino Canyon Visitor Center. Sandi mans the visitor services desk and I have developed a Junior Ranger Program which I am supposed to present twice a day on Saturdays and Sundays. We only “work” three days a week but are always with two or three other volunteers or paid personel. Sabino Canyon, next to the Grand Canyon, is the most visited natural area in Arizona (so I’ve heard). Very few of the daily visitors come into the visitor center with only 400-500 coming through the door on a busy day; most come to the co-located bookstore that is operated by a separate organization so the three or four of us essentially take turns helping the few visitors who ask for help. The Forest Service has not been very aggressive in advertising the Junior Ranger Program and I have only given the program to about 40 people in eight weeks. Needless to say, we are far from over worked. The rest of the volunteers who work here are a good group. Like many public land management agencies (National Forest, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife, and National Park Service), the organizations would not be able to do what they do without the volunteers. It is very apparent here. I think the other volunteers are kept rather busy during their work periods but Sandi and I are very underutilized. Never-the-less we sure enjoy being in the area.

On our four days a week off we generally take a hike through the canyon area. Our 1-6 mile hikes are special events. We always hope to see Coatis, Gila Monsters, Bobcats, or Mountain Lions but we are never in the right place at the right time. We have seen an assortment of comon lizards including collared-lizards. It is probably too cold for the big lizards but in the time we have been here others have reported seeing the cats and coatis. Maybe we will be lucky before we leave here. We’ve been to the Tucson Opera, toured the Biosphere, driven to Mount Lemmon, and have found the selection of resturaunts in Tucson great. A China-Thai resturaunt serves great spring rolls and friends of ours from Yellowstone NP and Big Bend NP stopped by and we went to the El Corral resturaunt for great prime rib where we were surrounded by old photos of the likes of Tom Mix, Roy Rodgers, Hopalong Cassidy, the Cisco Kid, Gene Autry and others--all the others.

Golf has been good. I get out twice a week and am playing well but just can not seem to get the game to where I want it but I guess all golfers never get low enough scores. Maybe today will be the day. Sandi has been spending lots of time exercising her sewing machine and is nearing completion of several projects.

We have gone through a rash of RV maintenance problems. A rogue rock jumped out and scraped the RV and the car-in-tow while I was pulling into a camping spot. Can’t believe what it cost to fix up just a scratch. Our powered patio awning had a multiple component failure. A gas spring failed and the motor stopped working. I had to have a gas spring special made but I was able to dissassemble the motor assemble and fix that myself. We came home one day to find our refrigerator on but not cooling. Took a new cooling unit. Then themicrowave/convection oven had a capacitor short out and I had to take it to a shop. They did fix it in just a couple days. Hope the string of failures stops. We have really been fortunate that we have had very few equipment failures since we started RVing.

We are in our last few days here. It has been interesting. A huge tortise wandered into the canyon. I t was identified as an exotic African Spur-thighed tortoise. We found out that it had escaped from a neighboring yard. It weighed over 80 pounds and was probably ten times larger than the native dessert tortoise that lives here. On Monday I went out of the RV and came face-to-face with a bobcat. I called to Sandi and she nearly swooned. She has a special attraction to wild cats and seeing one so close is special.