April 2011 Moving to Arizona

April 5   
    It was so windy Monday night that we felt like a ship at sea in our camper and got very little sleep.  Left at 6 and were on the road 11 hours, stopping for gas, lunch and a half hour nap in our rolling bedroom.  Tom pulled the 31' camper with the Ram pickup and I drove the SUV.  We found a secluded KOA campground and slept like babies.
    Wed:  Left before 6 and drove nearly 12 hours, though we really hadn't intended to.  But decided we wanted a short final day tomorrow so we could get settled at the campground on the base in Tucson.  This is the third time we've driven this road since December and we did our sightseeing then and will travel it back and forth to Washington for many summers ahead, we hope.
    Thurs:  We slept in till 6:30 and washed our flannel sheets while we got ready.   As we were ready to leave, Tom noticed one of the truck tires was low so he used his small compressor and it took 40 minutes to bring it up 30 pounds.  We headed out and stopped 40 minutes later to look at it and it ws down again.  He pumped it up again and we went back about 2 miles to a tire place where they found 2 nails.  That was the only problem we had and we felt blessed since we had 3 vehicles and were riding on 14 tires.

    We were able to rent a spot at the RV park at the family campground on Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, which was our hope (cheaper, since we'll be here 3+ months) .  This prickly pear cactus in starting to bloom.  We have seen several with yellow flowers and one with orange ones.  The round one behind is a barrel cactus which gets flowers too.  The similar one behind it is a new saguaro one.  I will discuss their heights and weights soon and it surprised us that the bases of the saguaro are thinner than the barrel cacti that stay low-many are lower than this one.

                                   this bush is an ocotillo and we've seen them 15' high or more