Three weeks in Tucson

Our stay in Tucson was shorter than usual. For three weeks we had great weather, well behaved dogs, and nice RV neighbors on each side of our rig -- one couple is from Boise and the other from Gresham, OR.

During those three weeks we read (Bev), watched TV (Jim), went to the Air Force base gym every day (except for on the weekends, as the base closed the gym on weekends to retirees, which was a bummer), and walked, walked, walked the dogs.

Other major activities:

--Visited the downtown Tucson Museum of Art and North Tucson's DeGrazia in the Sun Gallery.

-- Made our usual tour of local breweries and beer bars:  Barrio, Yard House, Ermanos, Arizona Beer House, Public Brew House, Pueblo Vida, Drunken Chicken, Crooked Tooth, and Black Rock. Wow. That was a lot of beer places to type. Guess that pretty much delineates our major activity. Like lots of cities, Tucson has breweries popping up all over. We'd recommend any of the ones mentioned but especially liked Public Brew House, Crooked Tooth, and Black Rock. Those are tasting houses (no food.)  If you want food, go to Barrio.

-- Went to Bev's favorite Tucson restaurant, El Charro.

--Walked around Tucson's funky, artsy Fourth Avenue area.

--And then walked the dogs some more. We saw another dog on base that looked like Arlo (lots of small black spots with one big black spot on his back, brown spotted lower legs, and a brown face). We stopped the car to talk with the human. I rolled down the window on the passenger side, and doggie put his paws on the open window and hauled himself right into the car and onto my lap.

-- And, we spent most of one day on a rig repair. We got the rig ready to drive to an air compressor so we could fill the tires, but the truck battery was dead. We have road-side assistance through both AAA and our RV insurance (Foremost).  After a long wait to get a jump from one of them and see if the problem was only our old battery -- or something more serious -- turns out neither service could get on base. Luckily for us, the base has an auto repair shop and they had the battery we needed -- so Jim just changed out the battery.

A painting at Tucson's downtown Museum of Art, plus a close up of the same painting. Exhibits also included western scenes by Tuscon artist Howard Post (including three paintings of fence posts, which were actually cooler than that sounds), and a display of mid century modern paintings and objects.

A self-portrait of Ettore "Ted" DeGrazia, who designed the many buildings and rooms of the ten acre DeGrazia in the Sun Gallery.  He also built it himself with the help of native American friends.  Lovely building and grounds. DeGrazia is famous for colorful painting of native cultures of the Sonoran Desert. His gallery is home to more than 15,000 of his works.

DeGrazia used materials from the southwest to build his home/gallery, including one section that used slices of cholla cactus. DeGrazia died in 1982. A few years before his death he hauled 100 of his paintings via horseback to a mountain where he burned them to protest inheritance taxes on works of art.

One of our new favorite Tucson bartenders in Tucson, this time at Public House. Jim keeps track of his beer in an app called "Untapped" which says he's tasted 398 different beers.  Mind you, that is over the course of five years -- not just our three weeks in Tucson. But I'm guessing he'll pass 400 this weekend.

On Tucson's Fourth Avenue we saw displays of locks. Right before Valentine's Day people could buy locks from a charity, decorate them with a friend/love, then lock it on the display and throw away the key.

Murals like these cover a lot of building walls in downtown Tucson.