Tucson - Surprise! We have an extra day

     Tucson is a great place to visit, al kinds of outdoor activities to do.  We spent a week in Tucson in the summer of 2010 with our good friends, John & Cindy.  There was beautiful scenery, great hiking trails and friendly people.  We hiked some excellent trails in the national parks ..........what a great bargain national parks provide.  We also visited Scottsdale, Tombstone, Jerome and Bisbee.  Tombstone was kind of a bust, way too commercial, overdone.

     Bisbee and Jerome were interesting little towns, well worth the visit.  We ran into a guy that built a motorized bicycle, he was thrilled with it and happy to tell us all about it.  He bought a gas engine kit online built for bicycles, pretty cool.

     We ate lunch at the Bisbee Grill and had Bison burger, very good.  Bisbee is in the southern part of Arizona, near the border of Mexico.  As we were heading back to Tucson, we were pulled over by the border patrol to check our citizenship.  Everyone, except Mimi had their drivers license, but one look at her they could easily tell she belonged in the U.S. So they waved us on.  After resting a bit at the hotel we decided to have dinner at Michelangelo's restaurant, great meal.

     The next day we visited the Pima Air and Space Museum and the Aircraft bone yard truly amazing.  If you're an aviation enthusiast, you will love the tour.  We went to Saguaro National Park to do a little hiking then drove around the park, all in all a great day.  We found this gourmet sandwich place near our hotel, which we ate a few times called Baggin's.  Their gourmet sandwiches were very tasty and each came in a bag with a cookie, hence the name Baggin's.

     We inquired about the old town area and we were directed to 4th street, which turned out to be an area where you might see the hippy dippy weatherman.  There were head shops with psychedelic music playing and a bizarre amount of questionable paraphernalia for sale.  It was like a throwback from the 60's burnouts included. Since we drove there, there was no reason not go into some of these shops. It could be interesting.  Well, when the 4 of us walk in, the clerk immediately questioned straight-laced Mimi "Did someone drag you in here or did you come in on your own."  Really, how rude. I guess Mimi could never do under cover work.

     The next day we checked out of the hotel to grab breakfast then head to the airport, when Mimi called her sister (Ann) to tell her we were on our way home.  Ann simply said "Really, I thought you we coming back tomorrow."  This puzzled Mimi enough to look at the reservations and sure enough we didn't leave until the next day, Cool an extra day.  Well, it wasn't really but it felt like it, so we immediately checked back into the hotel wondering way they hadn't mentioned anything when we checked out.  Oh, well our reservations were still in tact.

     Now, what were going to do on our free day, we decided to take a small hike then come back and relax in the pool.  We were staying at the Wingate and while we were down at the pool we met a father and his daughter (Hanna) from Ipswich, England. The father was relaxing while his daughter Hanna was swimming in the pool.  Hanna was very cute, funny and engaging young girl as well as a very good swimmer.  Hanna and her father were supposed to leave for home on Thursday but their return was postponed because of the ash clouds from the volcano in Iceland. We spent an enjoyable afternoon trying to beat Hanna in a swimming race but lost every time.  Youth always wins out in a athletic competition. We hope they arrived home safely in time for Hanna's 10th birthday on April 20th.  I'm practicing the swimming strokes Hanna taught me but I'm afraid there is little hope for improvement.

     The next morning we checked out of the hotel and headed for the airport, Hmm, this feels vaguely familiar, deja-vu.