Final Days in Tucson

Our time in Tucson has come to an end and it is time to move on. We have been here for just 5 weeks and the time went really fast. This past week we all moved a couple miles down the road from the Snyder Hills BLM area to Justin’s Diamond J’s where we have full hookups! We were trying to remember the last time we had full hook ups and the best that we could come up with was last November when we left North Dakota and that was for one day. Previous to that it was almost a year! Forrest, Somer and Lily will be here for a total of 8 weeks while stayed just one week.

Our site at Diamond J's

So we took advantage of it. Barb spent several days cleaning the inside of the rig. The dust from Quartzsite and Snyder Hills was in every crack and crevice. She ripped everything apart, vacuumed and wiped it down. I cleaned the outside just getting the surface dirt off and finished taping and dicor’ing the roof.

Barb took a road trip to meet her friend Nancy who is currently staying in Casa Grande. Nancy and her husband Greg are part-timers from Minnesota. Nancy picked a restaurant that was in the middle for traveling distance and outside of a town called Marana.  Although the outside looked kinda sketchy, they had great food, a friendly waitress, beer (of course), and a fun place to hang out for a couple hours!  Barb had not seen her in a couple years and said it was great to finally get together and catch up.   

We managed to get out to dinner one night to one of the two Mexican restaurants that Barb wanted to get to while we were in town. And bonus…..we went on her birthday! Jim and Brenda arrived back in town for a few days and joined us and bought Barb a Prickley Pear Cactus Margarita…thanks guys!

The biggest news of the week was that our window came in!!!! The day before we were set to leave…..nothing like cutting it close. It was a week later than the 4 week maximum that promised but it was the right window and fairly easy to install.

First we had to remove the valence around the window, remove the day/night shade and then remove all the screws around the inside of the window. Getting the old window out proved to be a little challenging as they use a very sticky caulk tape to secure it in place.

After getting the old window out I had to thoroughly clean the surface around the opening, apply the caulk tape around the new window and slide it in place. But things are never quite that easy. There was a noticeable gap at the top of the window. After removing it and adjusting it several times we noticed that the old window had a couple of shims to hold it up so we stole those off the old window and got it in place! Finally we are whole again and ready to roll!!!