Moving on to Tucson

Van loaded to the hilt

October 16 - Everyone was up pretty early and we had a nice breakfast of bagels, fruits, donuts, juice and coffee.  We didn't leave until 9:30 after Doug got home from work.  We packed the car before he got home so we were ready to go once we said our goodbyes.  He and Shannon are great hosts and we enjoyed spending some time by the pool chatting.  Hope they can make it to Florida some day.

The traffic ran smooth most of the way to Tucson but there was one stretch of road work that slowed us up for a bit.  We exited to visit Rooster Cogburn's Ostrich Farm, as I've always wanted to see the birds up close and though Karen and Jean would enjoy it, but as luck would have it, it was not open today.  We tried to get some photos from over the fence as they were being fed but it just didn't turn out well.  Oh well, next time!

After unloading our stuff we went to Subway for lunch.  Carole took a long way home to show some of the "sights" around their neighborhood.  A lot of their schools have been closed.  The elementary school just around the corner was closed and is now being used for a training center for the local police.

Kelly at the trail ranch

I put a load of wash in for the 3 of us and forgot about it as we had reservations for a trail horse ride with a cowboy cookout dinner scheduled.  We needed to be there at 4:30 and in checking it wasn't that far but we needed 45 minutes to get there and for us that really meant an hour.  We changed into our jeans, grabbed our bags and headed out.  Good thing we allowed extra time as we exited in the wrong direction off the interstate.  Melissa, my new navigator needs some training!  On the drive in we got to see a roadrunner run across the road in front of us and later there are range cattle that were on the side of the road.  Karen and Jean had never experienced free range cattle.

Karen on Little Princess

Turned out they were not back yet from the afternoon ride so we looked around some.  It's located on the Colossal Cave property.  I'd like to visit that one day.  We were the only people on the sunset ride so we had Cody, our guide to ourselves.  Jean was lead, then me and bringing up the rear was Karen.  She was her normal entertaining self as she tried to discipline her horse continually for stopping to eat all the way.  She wasn't the best at keeping a firm hand with her steed.