Goodbye Tucson… Hello Brookings
Moving to Tucson feels like just yesterday. At the same time, it feels like we have been here much longer than six months. We came into the desert with some knowledge of it, and we are now leaving with a deep love and understanding of it. We now know that Tucson is light-years better than Phoenix, the Sonoran Desert is the wettest desert in the world, and that the Tucson area has a road that is like driving from Mexico to Canada in a matter of 30 miles. There are a lot of things we will miss about our time here, but we are also very excited to take on the next challenges life has for us in Brookings, Oregon. We have a long drive to get there. Two full days navigating from the southern end of California through its northern Redwood forests and onto the beautiful Oregon Coast. We are pleased to share our last bits of love for the desert and take you on the journey to swap our scenery from cacti to coastline.
Mile: 86,412
Quote of the Blog: “There is nothing more thrilling than arriving in a new place on your own and feeling the sense of possibility and excitement that brings with it." - Diane von Furstenberg
Song of the Blog: “Changes” - David Bowie
Tucson is a unique desert experience. The Sonoran Desert is the wettest desert in the world. The combination of summer monsoons and frequent winter storms allows for a very lush and green desert. Unlike our time in Phoenix, we were able to find some shade and trees to block out the desert sun. The addition of Mount Lemmon gave us a respite when the spring temps jumped into the triple digits. I was even able to go up there two different times for activities I did not know existed in Tucson. The first time, it snowed up there. This blew me away, and was so fun to play in it. The other time, I went up to a small reservoir to fish for massive rainbow trout. All of this together creates an outdoor playground of endless opportunities and miles of hiking trails to explore. We found ourselves creating a routine where Sundays were our hiking days and Mondays were our golfing or city days. We explored Sabino Canyon, Catalina State Park, Reddington Pass, Bear Canyon, and all over both the east and west sides of Saguaro National Park, all while making a fantastic hiking friend in Katie!
On golf days, we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was much easier to get a tee time than in Phoenix. Our favorite location to play golf was at the Pusch Ridge Golf Course. This is a 9-hole course that plays fairly challenging, with all the holes being elevated and difficult to land on. The stunning views of the Catalina Foothills and Mount Lemmon will go down as some of the best golf course scenery we have seen. We found three courses we would play periodically. One of the more comical places was down in Green Valley. This area is a 55+ city of around 20,000. Pretty amazing that places like this exist, but if there was ever a place for it, Souther Arizona is the spot! We loved our golfing Mondays, and the sunshine that came along with it!
We are not sure if we ever truly found “downtown” Tucson. We loved the different areas of the city and how they operate as their own downtowns with their own character and personality. As with all contracts, we tend to find some of the best gems right before we leave. This was the case with the Mercado District, MotoSonora Brewing Company and boozy margarita soft serve ice cream at Sister’s Restaurant. The Mercado District is a cool open-space outdoor market area with restaurants and bars that is built out of shipping containers. Very simple, but full of character. MotoSonora Brewing Company was only 10 minutes from our house and was by far the best microbrewery in Tucson! The boozy soft serve was a hit with Amity! One of the best activities we got to do right before we left was go to a concert at La Rosa. This venue was a church and now host events and concerts. We picked a very eccentric band called March Fourth. All but a circus and a concert all in one. The venue was beautiful too! We made every opportunity to get to these areas as much as we could before our time ran out.
The last item to note about Tucson is the flowers. This was not something we anticipated experiencing in the desert. From the first winter flowers coming up across the U of A campus to the grandeur and beauty of a full saguaro cactus flower bloom, something was always in bloom. Observing cacti grow flowers is such an amazing experience. In such a desolate and arid environment can come some of the most beautiful blooms we have seen. Some of the smallest cacti can produce some of the most vibrant colors. The last set of flowers we got to enjoy were the saguaro cactus flowers. This is something to be seen! These giants can produce dozens of flowers at the same time. We were lucky to have the drone to fly up to the top of these 20’-30’ cacti and get a close-up view of them. On one of our last hikes, we found one that had an arm growing down toward the ground with blooms on it. It was really cool to be able to get a close-up view of them. They truly are a symbol that soft and comforting things do exist in the most rugged and harsh environments. That is how we view Tucson. A blue dot in a sea of red. A welcoming and diverse town in the middle of a desolate desert. A gigantic mountain in the flatlands of the Southwest. We are sad to be leaving Tucson, but a large part of us leaves knowing that we will be back. Something happened here that is rare in our travel world!
With our entire lives packed into our car, we pull any roots we may have sprouted in Tucson out and set a route for our new lives in Brookings, Oregon. Before we get there, we must conquer the highways of the third-largest state in the country from the southern end all the way to the northern border. The drive was just over 1,200 miles. It took us two days. The first day, we put in a longer drive and made it up to the Central Valley of California. This area has an insane stretch of interstate that has nothing but rural farmland. We passed the “Pistachio Capital of the World” along the way, with nothing but miles and miles of pistachio trees. After 12 hours in the car, we called it a night. The next day, we finished the drive up to Brookings with another 9 hours in the car. Both days, we found ourselves skirting the suburbs of both Los Angeles and San Francisco. We got a quick dose of what traffic and commuting is like for those people who live outside of the city and have to navigate those highways. Even with it being Mother’s Day weekend, the traffic was enough to scare us away from any contracts in those areas unless Amity were able to walk to work. As we pushed north of the Bay Area, we started to come into one of the elements we were going to be spending a lot of time in: the Redwood forests. These trees are spectacular. We found ourselves needing a pit stop at a rest area north of Eureka, CA. We think we might have stopped at the most scenic rest area in the country! MASSIVE TREES EVERYWHERE! Following our stop, we took a scenic bypass through the Avenue of the Giants. This area is absolutely breathtaking. The size of these trees is hard to put into words. We have lived in apartments and houses that were smaller than some of these trees. As we continued through these vast forests, we quickly found ourselves pressed against the Pacific Ocean. The rugged coastline mixed with the dense forests is a welcome sight. This means we are on the Pacific Coast Highway, and very close to Brookings. We were able to pull into our new rental in Brookings just before the sun set. We were happy to be out of the car and have a chance to stretch our legs, unpack, and make a quick store run for the essentials.
Over the next week, we spent our time getting familiar with our new home. Amity is working at a very small clinic, where she is the only full-time physical therapist. She is also back to doing outpatient treatment after doing acute care treatment in Tucson, where her hospital required miles of walking per day. I stayed busy with coffee jobs and making sure we got everything squared away in our new rental. We spent our free time exploring the beaches around Brookings. We are so lucky! We have several beaches within a 10-minute drive of our house. On the first night we were there, we had done all of our necessary errands and realized we had 10 minutes until sunset. It took us 5 minutes to get in the car and drive over to Harris Beach State Park to watch the first sunset of our lives in Oregon. What a treat! Oregon welcomed us with some spectacular weather! We have since driven up the Chetco River, walked the beach at Whaleshead Beach, and found some sand dunes and rugged coastline views at Indian Sands. We don’t have enough time in the day to see everything we want to. It is hard not to be exploring a beach. We will miss Tucson, but we will be very happy in our new home. We don’t have time to decompress; maybe that will happen in a week or two… NOT! We have a lot to do and see as we Live Rad in Oregon!
