Tucson: Day 6

This is what I love about Tucson - a random mosaic wall in front of a convenience store. It's not anyplace special, but the owners have created art on an ordinary wall where you can sit and drink your 20 oz. soda. It would give the city council in Newport the vapours, the black horrors, and three other kinds of hysteria-induced archaic ailments. I think it's great.

Lynette and I slept late on my last day in Tucson while the Army Dude and his sister Penny went to an appointment with the doctor. We two sat around in our pajamas and chatted while she took her osteoporosis meds and I checked my email (we are amazing multi-taskers). Later, Lynette, the Army Dude, and I went back to The Lost Barrio to look around a bit more. We followed this up with a trip back to 4th Street, where we had cold drinks and pastries at our favorite coffee shop. It's funny - I've been to Tucson often enough to have a favorite coffee shop. I am amazed by that.

Another very cool thing about Tucson is that "horse country" begins inside the city limits. Barely a ten-minute drive from an area with supermarkets and a Walgreens, you can find this. If you know where to look. Some friends of Penny live in an old adobe ranch house surrounded by horse paddocks and mesquite trees, and this is the view from their backyard. It's a little patch of heaven that's about ten degrees cooler than just a few miles up the road.

It would have been slightly more heavenly if the owner didn't keep talking about Rattlesnake Encounters Right Here In My Yard. I think she was doing it to scare the greenhorns from back east (which worked on me but not the Army Dude - apparently, rattlesnakes are no big deal when you've encountered camel spiders), but it just goes to show you that in this life you can't have everything. In Tucson, though, you get pretty darn close.

Tucson: Day 5

In the morning, we went to The Lost Barrio, a fantastic shopping area with stores containing home furnishings to die for (if you live in a Tucson hacienda, and not a small New England apartment like I do), vintage bric-a-brac and clothing, garden decorations - you name it.

One of the things I love about Tucson is the exuberant decorating on the exteriors of buildings. Back in Newport, the neighbors would go absolutely apeshit over something like this and the tenants would be forced to remove everything that gives the street character and make it as boring and homogenous and the rest of the shopping district. Not in Tucson. Individuality and artistic expression are expected and encouraged.

Speaking of artistic expression, I loved these illuminated paintings by a local artist, who is also the owner of the shop. She has a little painting studio in one corner, so I imagine she works on her art between customers. So much for my therapist's theory that you can't schedule creativity and that you have to wait for the muse to come knocking. A girl's got to make a living - and she does, in fine and creative style.

It was 100 degrees for the first time this year in Tucson yesterday, and I was feeling it by the time we got back to the house. Lynette and I had a lunchtime snack of ice cream with chocolate sauce and we took naps while we waited for the Army Dude and his sister to come back from an appointment with the doctor. They brought us Indian food from the New Delhi Palace and we ate again. Yes, technically we had two lunches. Then we lounged around all afternoon. She watched her favorite game shows while I read Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love and occasionally shouted out answers to questions on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Lynette is 88 and I'm on vacation, and that's how we roll.

Tucson: Day 4

The Army Dude, my friend Lynette and I visited Old Tucson Studios in the middle of the Saguaro National Park . It's a little bit of Hollywood in the middle of the desert, which was a lot of fun for an old movie buff like me. Our tour guide, pictured above - a nice guy from Cape Cod - told us tales of the heyday of Old Tucson Studios, when John Wayne and Clint Eastwood made movies there. It's still a working studio, but not as many movies are made there nowadays.

I was concerned that the Army Dude and his mother, being fair-skinned Irish/English people, would get sunburnt, so I fussed over them and lectured them on the use of sunscreen. Of course, you know what's coming. The only one who got burnt was the brown person - me. The sunburn is really only on my shoulders, but I didn't hear the end of it for the rest of the day.

I bought this awesome necklace at a shop at the studio. I met, the artist, an Apache guy who was super nice. Next thing I knew, I had the necklace on and I was in love. Yes, I spent too much money on it, and yes, I will be an old lady pushing my shopping cart down the road, but I will be doing it in a fabulous necklace and that's what matters.

Tucson: Days 1-3

I'm spending a week in Tucson visiting two members of my family of choice, one of whom had surgery last week. She's doing well, and we're all having a good time.

After a mostly-uneventful seven hours of travel (the shortest trip I've ever taken from Rhode Island to Arizona) I arrived hungry, cold, and not fully awake. After breakfast at the Waffle House and a nap, I managed a visit with my friends and to eat Chicken Marsala, one of the Army Dude's specialties. I staggered off to bed at 9:00, completely forgetting to take my meds. Good news, though: it turns out that if I miss one dose of my anti-depressant, I don't have a psychotic break. Not that I'm in any danger of becoming psychotic (that I know of) but there are dire warnings on the literature that comes with the medication that says "very bad things can happen if you stop taking this abruptly. Including, but not limited to psychotic breaks and feeling like dogshit." Or something similar. So no psychotic break. Yay!

On the morning of Day Two, we visited and chatted, then the Army Dude and I went to some consignment shops. One of the really cool things about Tucson is that it's an artistic hippie community, so there are all kinds of consignment and thrift stores, vintage clothing stores, and stores that specialize in recycled items. One consignment shop we went to was approximately the size of the Walmart store back home, and contained about ten times the merchandise. We have to go back there, since after I saw the left-handed boomerang, I was totally confused.

That night we went to see Robert Cray at the Historic Rialto Theatre, which is across the street from the Hotel Congress, where John Dillinger once stayed. The hotel is also reputed to be haunted. All I can tell you for sure is that the food was great at the hotel's Cup Cafe, and that Robert Cray rocked the house. It was a great show. We also really enjoyed the warmup band, Bad News Blues.

Day 3 started with a walk in the morning sunshine, which I followed with a two-hour nap (I was still a bit jet-lagged after being up late the night before). After lunch, the Army Dude and I headed to 4th Street (pictured above). It's an area with quirky shops and tattoo parlors and vintage clothing stores. I found a couple of gifts for folks back home, and bought myself a handmade bracelet of turquiose and copper beads and rattlesnake vertebrae. Which is the closest I ever want to get to a rattlesnake, even if it does taste like chicken.

Tucson Travelogue

Behold the room where I'm staying in Tucson, AZ. It is made entirely out of awesome.