We’re in Tucson, and starting to get settled in

Saturday we arrived in Tucson, and we are getting settled in.  Anne-Marie and I checked out the available sites in the park, and we were looking at moving across the cul-de-sac and next door to Steve, but Anne-Marie just couldn’t find the ideal spot for the trailer.  We even were considering pulling our trailer in head first, and this would give us a desert view from the front room, and that would be great, but the utilities would have to wrap around the trailer and attach to the hookups right near where our front door would be, (only the sewer would be objectionable).

Anne-Marie choose the site that was right next door to our old site, from last year.  Mark and Maria had moved into our old site after we left for the traveling season last spring, and Doc the park owner, was wanting them to move before we returned.  I didn’t have an emotional attachment to our old space, and Doc was told, we will use a different one for the season.  We are making progress on the new site, and I have raked the small gravel around, and it looks like we will have a very large patio area.  We have bird feeders, and we are working on having a good viewing area, while not making a home for unwanted pests (packrats).  It looks like I will have to clean out some cactus at the base of our Palo Verde tree, to eliminate hiding holes for snakes and rats.

We have a new finch feeder, and already they have found it.

One of the park residents found a clay pot ring in the desert, while on a walk right next to the RV Park.  There were some severe rain storms this last summer, and the water uncovered this next to the trail.

Grandma Johnson’s house is for sale, and Anne-Marie’s washer and drier are still there, and these pictures were taken on a laundry day.  On a walk, I found  a tree that was in bloom, but the flowers were small and green, and didn’t show up at all.  The bugs were all over this tree, bees, butterflies, wasps, and lots of different pollen gathering flies.  What attracted my attention the most was the tarantula hawks, and I wasn’t able to get a close up picture of any of them, but these pictures show two different exposures of these large wasps.  These are large black wasps that get up to 2 inches long, and they make a noise similar to a grasshopper when flying.

There were a lot of these butterflies on the tree, and they were a lot of fun to watch.  As I stood close by this tree, I could see hundreds of these fluttering about, feeding on the tree.