Day 16

States visited: still in Arizona (we rather like it here).

Sites seen: Saguaro National Park, downtown Tucson, Tucson murals

Today has been a good day. We allowed ourselves some extra sleep and time at the campsite this morning (they had iced coffee…with actual ice!) and then we headed back to my brother’s house.

Before we get to the time with my brother this afternoon, a side story. I don’t know why, but yesterday when we were at the Grand Canyon, I was certain we were to cancel our hotel reservations for Yosemite. I don’t know why, but I knew it had to be done. So we called and cancelled our reservation which meant we were now without a place to stay there. Then this morning I awoke to a text from a friend (thanks, Ben!) asking if Yosemite was still in our plans and asking if we had seen the news. (I haven’t seen the news or any tv since we left so I have no idea what is going on.) So I got onto the National Parks website and discovered that the part of the park we were heading to, as well as the town we were staying in, had been evacuated and were closed. They may or may not reopen when we’re supposed to be there but we have gone on and changed our plans. We will instead be heading to Zion and Bryce National Parks. And the wonderful people at the KOA this morning called the campsite closest to those so we are all set. We are definitely feeling watched over!

Now onto our day…

Michael took us to Saguaro National Park this afternoon and that was really cool. Not living in a state with cactuses (seriously, is it cacti?) I haven’t really given any thought to them. Turns out they’re giant.

Some of them are as tall as a house. And the ones without arms? They are babies. They don’t get their arms until around 65 yrs.

For dinner tonight we went into downtown Tucson to a place called Boca Taco y Tequila. The guacamole was amazing and the food was great, too!

After that we walked a couple of blocks to a market that holds a little piece of Ohio away from home.

Jeni’s!

Downtown Tucson is really cute!

And they have really neat murals around town as well.

All in all a good day! Thankful once again to be with family. I definitely had a flashback to childhood memories today as we had music playing and we were all singing and adding harmonies and such in the car (Michael does the high part of course 😜).

It’s nice to enjoy the comforts of home once again before heading to San Diego (Mike’s family is going with us, too!).

Talk to you soon-

Deanna