Kartchner Caverns State Park, Arizona

It was another day of driving yesterday...around 250 miles. It was worth the distance to arrive at this really nice state park in southern Arizona. We are close to the border with Mexico here.

We have a very nice site at the edge of the park. The park is full, but it feels as if we're here by ourselves. Our closest neighbors are about 30 feet away, and behind us...nothing but desert.

Smitty took one look at his new digs and he knew he was going to like it here. We got out right away for a nice long walk...the longest of the trip so far.

Since I didn't have the camera with me, I didn't get any pictures of our walk until after he'd gone back inside. It was a good thing too because he dragged me all through branches and brambles and cactus with thorns. Behind us are these barrel cactus.

The taller one even has some blossoms on the top.

Also, I noticed this teeny tiny cactus growing among the grass. Hard to say what kind it will become.

Backing up to Camp Verde, it was a nice drive south. There must have been a lot of rain in Arizona over the past year because the desert is very green. I keep expecting to see wildflowers. Heading south, we started seeing our old friends, the Saguaro cactus.

As we got closer to Phoenix, we saw more and more.

I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating. The saguaro cactus just amaze me. You can read more about how they reproduce at this website right here. They produce a flower and a fruit. Each fruit contains some 2,000 seeds. That's amazing enough, but after they drop their seeds, they require 1-½ inches of rain within the next day. Not enough, and the animals will eat them. Too much and they will wash away. If they get the amount of rain necessary, they still have a difficult ride if they germinate. After one year, they are only ¼-inch tall. After five years they are just one inch tall. And after 15 years, they will be only 1 foot tall. They will be 100 years old before they grow their first arm. It’s incredible to me that any of them exist at all. And yet...there they are.

So we have been seeing some wildflowers. I hope we'll start seeing more and more. Yesterday the medians and the roadsides were lined with these yellow flowers. Hard to say what they are without a closer look. All I could do was snap bunches of pictures as we sped by, just hoping to capture something to show you. Sorry for the blur.

Near Tucson, we started seeing these little purply jobs. They appear to be grape hyacinths, but really, I have no idea. There were also some taller pink varieties, but I couldn't capture them. Hopefully, we'll see more.

We amused ourselves as we drove through Phoenix. We lived here from 1975-1978, and we've never really had any reason to return. We were content in Phoenix, but it was just a place to live while we worked to move on to a better life. We will never be city dwellers. In any case, the street names were so familiar, and they each held memories for us.

Bethany Home Road was the location of the local humane society. We got our first furkid there. We were told he was a female, and so as we drove home, we chose "Bethany" as his name. It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? No, but we weren't very imaginative with our names. Within a few weeks, we became fairly certain that Bethany was not a female, but he was already answering to his name. And so we started calling him "Benny," which we made more formal by eventually starting to call him Benjamin. He was a great cat...a long-haired ginger boy.

The next block was Camelback Road. If we still lived here, we would have taken the exit to head for home.

Camelback Road led some miles across town to where we lived on the east side. It was named for the Camelback mountains. I tried to catch an image of them as we drove by. An awful lot of tall buildings, power poles, and a new-to-us stadium were in my way, but you can see them in the image below. We lived at the bottom of those mountains.

Heading southeast toward Tucson, we caught sight of Pichacho Peak. We'll be there on Tuesday for three days.

We stopped for lunch just outside Tucson. While Mike had his after-lunch nap, I stitched up the day's inchy assignment. Yesterday's task was to stitch all the blue hearts and flower buds on the vines across the top.

After his walk, Smitty conveniently plopped himself down at the top of the stairs, daring anyone to walk past without falling.

Sadie watched for any people to trip from her own seat in the bedroom window. Maybe they discuss practical jokes they can play while we go down the road on these driving days.

This morning, we've reserved a space on the cavern tour. Supposedly, this is one of the top ten caves in the world for exploring. It will be a first for both of us. Sadly, I won't be able to show you any pictures of our tour. Cameras and cell phones are not allowed. On a happier note, we don't have to drive anywhere. We can walk from our campsite to the "Discovery Center" to meet up with our tour.

Yesterday I said we had four nights here, but we actually have five. It will be nice to stay put for a while. There is a lot to see in this area, and we won't get it all done on this one visit. We're hoping to get out for a few hikes, but we'll also be driving south to see Tombstone and Bisbee. There is a mine tour in Bisbee that we're hoping to see. It requires reservations, and so it will mean a phone call to see if we can get a space. Except for today's tour, nothing is scheduled, and so we have a list of possibilities. It will all unfold. And, hey! Clearly I have an internet connection here. We didn't think we would have cell service, but we do. Life is good.