December 18-31, 2021
We were at the Rincon Country West RV Resort for seven weeks, leaving early in 2022. We still had a lot to see and do. The first part of our stay in Arizona is in Part 1, and this is the second part. Part 3 completes our stay in Arizona. It just kept getting better.
We went to Patagonia Lake State Park twice. The first time, we forgot the 360-degree camera but we got a lot of good photos and a little video on a cell phone. It's such a pretty place, though the lake is tiny.
Full-time RVing puts you in a different mindset about "camping" compared to being a Weekend Warrior. We stay at a lot of campgrounds, and the water in some areas of the country is very hard and nasty on pipes. So, we got a water softener. It's an external piece of equipment on our water line that uses salt to soften the water. It makes the shower positively glorious. We do need to bring it inside if the weather is below freezing for very long, but otherwise it's fantastic.
We spent Thanksgiving at the Tanque Verde Ranch with Monica's family (Dad, Linda, and Jill), which was really nice. We had dinners with them a few times before we left. They just bought and moved into a new house, so we got to see that. It was pretty awesome to be able to hang out with them more often.
We went out to dinner for Christmas, to a steakhouse, and though the food wasn't very good we had a fabulous time. It was nice to get dressed up and go celebrate.
Mom sent a fruitcake that was amazingly delicious (we ate it in just a few sittings), and we had a game night. Mom also sent us the tiniest Christmas tree for our place, and it was perfect. It really was a great holiday stay in Arizona.
One of the highlights was the holiday lights event at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. The gardens were really nice, and special because of how different the plants are in Arizona compared to the ones we are used to from Colorado. Cactus gardens are really very cool.
We heard about the crazy amount of water that Tucson gets sometimes, water that doesn't soak into the hard soil so it just stays on top and floods areas. We got a small example of it on the last day of 2021 when it rained like crazy, making a lake on our street in the RV resort. It was crazy!
We spent New Years Eve like any other evening, cuddled up on the couch. We just stayed up a bit later to make it to midnight. What an amazing year 2021 was! Be sure to check out the review of 2021 to see it all in a single blog post. Or keep reading to check out Part 3 of Tucson!
