Happy To Be Back In The Desert — LIVE RAD AND TRAVEL

It was a long journey to get from Wisconsin to Arizona. Now that we have made it, there are so many things to do. Not only does Amity have to completely relearn her job based on the new clinic, but we also have to adjust our lives to the fact that we are now living in a massive city. We have lived in southern Arizona before in Phoenix. Tucson has some similarities, but it is a much different city. Driving is still chaotic, everything is still spread way out, and nothing is “easy” to get to. The big difference is that Tucson is located in the middle of several mountain ranges, which lends itself to more hiking and closer adventuring! We are happy to get back to the desert for our second summer-winter in the desert! With milder-than-typical weather, we took the first couple of weeks in Tucson to find out what it’s all about!

Mile: 76,974

Quote of the Blog: “The desert tells a different story every time one ventures into it.” Robbert Edison Fulton Jr.

Song of the Blog: “Get Back” - The Beatles

Amity’s new job is a new one for her in the Physical Therapy world. It is an inpatient treatment job at the University Medical Center, which is part of the University of Arizona and is a Level 1 Trauma Center. This will provide challenges and opportunities for her to grow as a provider! She is a rockstar and will crush this new position! We always try to find a place to live that is close to her place of work, which has landed us two blocks away from the University of Arizona campus. It typically takes us a couple of weeks to fully unpack and feel like we are settled in. After initially unpacking the car, we took a break and walked down to a large street market happening a couple of blocks away. This was a great way to get a vibe check on Tucson. We quickly learned that we are very close to a lot of restaurants and nightlife. Our first stop was at Corbett’s Brewing. This is a small brewery that had some good beer. A very solid first outing in the new city!

As the week progressed, we became more acclimated to our surroundings and all but completed unpacking everything. Once the weekend hit, the first thing on our list was to get some hiking in. With some recent rain, Amity was advised by a coworker to go hike Seven Falls in Bear Canyon. This is just northeast of Tucson in the Sabino National Forest. Forests out here have a little bit fewer trees and are more or less all Saguaro cacti. Hiking amongst these massive cacti is such a different feeling. The trail works its way up a small canyon created by a running creek that flows into the mountains. We worked our way up the creek, crossing it several times; probably a couple more times than we actually needed to. At one point, we found ourselves a little ways off the trail, mostly because I was chasing a HUGE butterfly around with my camera. We eventually made our way up to the main waterfall area. This was a really cool oasis in the depths of the desert mountains. There were several pools as the waterfall cascaded down the mountainside. Amity found a great spot to lounge in the sun, while I trekked higher up to some of the upper falls. After a good amount of time exploring the area and watching tiny fish swim around the pools, we made our way back down the trail and to the car. This was surprisingly a very quiet trail, especially considering how close we are to the city and the fact that it’s the number one suggested trail on the AllTrails website. No complaints here! This was a beautiful way to officially welcome ourselves back to the rugged rawness of the Arizona desert. We capped the night off with another new brewery called Crooked Tooth Brewery. Beer was good, but expensive! Probably call this spot a one and done kind of place.

After scratching the hiking itch, we had to tackle the other Arizona activity we have missed: golfing in the winter! It has been a while since we have golfed. We did hit some balls in Wisconsin at the driving range, but the last time we played a round of golf was when we were living in Arkansas. That was only a year and a half ago, but it seems like a lifetime ago. We picked a nine-hole course to play on the northwest end of Tucson called Pusch Ridge Golf Course. This was a smaller course within a large resort that features two other 18-hole courses. Amity likes to keep it to nine holes, and I’m cool with that too. Surprisingly, we both knocked the cobwebs off quickly and found ourselves playing pretty well, taking into account the fact that we haven’t played in a while. Golfing in Arizona in December will really throw your brain for a loop. The only thing reminding us that it was actually winter was the fact that each tee box had some Christmas decorations up.

During the next week, we both started to feel like we had fully settled into our new home. We know where our grocery stores are, Amity has established her walking route to and from work, and we have both found good areas to run. We have learned that being hyper-aware of cars, intersections, and traffic while running is huge here. Amity reported that she sees a lot of people in the hospital who have been hit by cars. One of the spots I found to run is a bike path that loops around the whole city. It has over 100 miles of trails, which is perfect for running. There is no risk of getting hit by a car there, but there is a large risk of getting run over by a pack of road bikers going 30 mph on the path. Amity has found that running on the University of Arizona campus keeps her safe from cars and is a safer place for her to run in the evening hours after work. We are starting to realize how lucky we are to have the house location that we got. While we grinded out the next week of work, I was able to explore a coffee shop that is a five-minute walk from our rental called Screwbean. Not only is it a solid coffee shop, but it moonlights as a brewery. Talk about a win-win in the neighborhood. One night, I found us a hike in town that goes up to a U of A Desert Research Facility on the top of a small mountain called Tumamoc Hill. This was beautiful evening hike. As we got to the top of the trail, the sun was finishing setting, and the city lights were starting to dominate the views. The juxtaposition of the Saguaros silhouetted in front of the city was a beautiful sight. Its pretty amazing how rural Tucson can feel sometimes. It is a city of half a million people, but at times it feels like it’s much smaller and disconnected. Definitely nothing like the metro chaos of the east coast! We took in the views for a while before making our way back down the trail and home. We capped the night off with tacos! We hadn’t gone out for dinner yet and wanted to make sure we got a good introduction to the Mexican food scene here. We picked the restaurant Bocca, which boasted high-quality margaritas and artisan tacos. It was a delicious dinner, and since it was one of the spots we found during the art festival, it is walking distance from our rental. Big win in the taco world to start things off!

As the weekend came around, we wanted to take a night out in downtown Tucson to get a read on what that was like. We started our night at a whiskey bar called Batch. The element of intrigue here was their “Boozy Doughnuts.” Unfortunately, they were out of the boozy variety but still had regular doughnuts. We enjoyed a delicious lemon doughnut with a drink. They also have “Boozy Cereal”, which looks very odd but kind of good. Our first read on downtown Tucson was that it is not the vastness of Chicago, but there is a good variety of places to choose from within a walkable distance. Our next stop was Cobra Arcade Bar. Personal factoid here: we love to play pinball! Amity is way better than me at this, which is super fun to watch. At one point, I had played two total games at one machine, and when I looked over at Amity, she was still playing her first game and was still on her first ball. While we played, she was able to get her name up on the high scores a couple of times. We then walked over to a brewery downtown called Brick Box Brewing. This was a quick in and out, as we learned this was a punk rock brewery and they had a band playing music that nearly made my ears bleed. This led us down to Hotel Congress. This spot is on the main strip in Tucson and has a lot going on. I think I counted four different bars, and I didn’t even explore much. We ended our night with some bass music and some dancing, which we haven’t done in years! Amity really enjoyed an old guy who was up on stage dancing his heart out. The guy had to be in his 80s and was killing it! All in all, downtown Tucson has a strong vibe, at some points a little too strong of a vibe for us, but we will find our places over the next three months.

As for our last weekend, we took the next two days to do some hiking and some golfing. Amity’s weekend for this contract is Sunday and Monday, which will play really nicely for some quiet midday golfing on Mondays. Our Sunday hike took us up Mount Lemmon. This is north of Tucson and is another world! The summit of Mount Lemmon sits at over 9,000 feet of elevation, while the city is around 2,300 feet. The drive up to the town at the top of Mount Lemmon, Summerhaven, takes about an hour and goes up one of the most spectacular drives we have done, including Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier. It is called the Sky Island Scenic Byway. This drive has some of the most amazing vistas and pull-off areas that we could spend our entire time in Tucson exploring and still not do it all. Another amazing element of this area is how you start in a massive Saguaro cactus forest, and as you work your way up in elevation, the cacti disappear and are replaced with Douglas fir and ponderosa pine trees. The difference in climate is crazy—so much so that it snows on Mount Lemmon regularly. We picked the Butterfly Trail, with the plan to hike around four miles. Within this distance, we encountered a good amount of snow and ice in the shaded areas, as well as around 800 feet of vertical gain. It felt really good to be in the alpine again! Being in the mountains is always a happy place for us, and having this so close to our home is going to give us the opportunity to connect with the mountains whenever we want. After our hike, we treated ourselves to a massive cookie at the Cookie Cabin in Summerhaven. We also explored around the Mount Lemmon Ski Area. YES, skiing near Tucson! They don’t have enough snow yet to ski, but they will. They don’t have a set season and instead open when they can. You can only buy day tickets to ski here, and you better believe I will get up there and ski when it happens! It’s a pretty small ski hill, but it’s the southernmost ski area in the United States, which is cool. On our drive down Mount Lemmon, we stopped at Windy Point. This pullout features a breathtaking view of the surrounding mountains, valley, and distant mountain ranges on the horizon. We both immediately knew we would have to come back here to watch a sunset at some point while we are here. Mount Lemmon is definitely going to be one of our go-to spots!

For our Monday golf adventure, we headed to the Forty Ninener Country Club on the east side of Tucson. It was a great course. While playing, Amity admitted that she has been using ChatGPT for some golf instruction. We laughed for a bit, as whatever it is telling her is working! She jokingly named her golf coach “Chat from Chatham.” She is hitting the ball the best I have ever seen, which makes golf much more fun. There were a couple of holes where Amity beat me! It’s only a matter of time before she’s always beating me. One of the nice elements of both of the nine-hole courses we have played is that they play more like regular golf courses and are not nine-hole par-3 courses. Not only are they nicely maintained, but the variety of holes and distances allows us to get better at all elements of the game. We are in no way great golfers, but we really enjoy the challenge. Plus, who doesn’t like an afternoon in the sunshine? Our last item of the to-do list for our first couple weeks in Tucson was to go to a University of Arizona Basketball game. Their men’s team is currently ranked #1 in the country, and they are playing a small school, Abilene Christian University, and the tickets are super cheap compared to games like KU and Alabama. They ended up crushing Abilene Christian, as we expected them too. With the stadium being a 10 min walk from our house, we hope this is not the only game we are able to see, but if it is, we can say we have seen the #1 team in the country play. Pretty cool if you ask me! The first couple of weeks have flown by. We are happy to be in a place where we can be active outside and not be freezing. Last winter in New England was rough on Amity, so having some sunshine and nice weather is a welcome change. Here’s to the next three to five months of living rad around all the saguaros, chollas, and prickly pear cacti!