Snowbirds in Tucson

November 16th, 2025, to February 28th, 2026

This was our fifth year wintering in Tucson, Arizona. We are definitely "snowbirds" as people who travel to warmer, southern areas of the United States in the winter to avoid snow and cold temperatures. Monica's dad lives in Tucson, and Sue and Toni do their snowbirding by owning a house in Green Valley, so it's the perfect spot for us to hang out for a bit. This year, we stayed at the Voyager RV Resort and loved it, especially the dog park.

Tucson is lovely, and with months in one spot it can be nice and relaxing. But it's also our time to get any of the repairs and work done that we find over the course of the year. A motor home has just as many repairs needed as a house does if you live in it full time, and our house flies down highways on a regular basis, so our home needs more attention from professionals than a sticks-and-bricks house would, usually. So, we checked in and then drove away again a few days later to go to Freedom RV (where we bought it originally) to get some stuff done. We had our highway incident earlier in the year, so we had to get work done on the motor home, trailer, and car while we were in Arizona. Our refrigerator was also not freezing ice anymore.

We had a pretty mellow Thanksgiving, picking up a bunch of sides from Honeybaked Ham and grabbing Thai food with dad and Linda that Friday. The week after Thanksgiving, Allie came to visit. Monica took some time off and we got to spend quality time together.

Margot's first Tucson surgery was on December 4th, the day after Allie got to Tucson. Margot had been struggling with a lot of pain in her left ankle, the one that was broken into many pieces after her fall the previous March. So, she was going to get an ankle replacement while we were there. It would take her two surgeries to do it -- one surgery to remove all of the hardware in her ankle from the previous surgeries, and another to put the artificial implant in. Allie and Monica had each other for support while Margot was under, and then Margot started her healing.

Luckily, Margot still had a lot of mobility support tools from her previous surgeries, including a motorized wheelchair. That meant we could still show Allie a lot of Tucson, including one of our favorite places, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

We went up to dad and Linda's house in Oro Valley for game nights fairly often during our whole stay, which was really nice. We also had a few nights spent in a reserved game room at our resort with the whole gang. We were also able to spend Linda's birthday with her. We didn't do anything for Christmas or New Year's Eve other than enjoying Monica's holiday time off and relaxing.

Margot's ankle replacement was completed on January 8th, and it all went well. She spent a week at Toni and Sue's house to recover because it's difficult to get up and down our motor home stairs when you can't walk (and it's a bit small for a wheelchair, especially in the bathrooms). The worst part of her recovery ended up being the waiting until she could walk on it. She could not use her left leg to walk from the first surgery on December 4th until February 17th when she could use it sparingly -- eleven weeks of using her wheelchair, a knee scooter, or a walker.

The motor home went twice to another shop for fiberglass work, and the car went for multiple trips to get patched up. We had dentist appointments and got eyeglass updates. Lacey's half-sister Mollie stayed with us for a week when Sue and Toni went out of town, and the two dogs loved being together.

Before we left, we managed to do the driving tour of the eastern side of Saguaro National Park, the Rincon Mountain District. The Cactus Forest Scenic Loop Drive is eight miles through the cactus and mountains, and it was lovely.

We have big plans for 2026! After Tucson, we headed to Los Angeles for our tour of the west coast. We'll head north from there to see all or most of the national parks between L.A. and Canada in California, Oregon, and Washington. We'll tour southwestern Canada a bit using the car before heading east a bit. A big feature of 2026 will be British Columbia and Alberta on the southern ends to see the big Canadian national parks there, and we can't wait. Then we'll cruise back into the United States to spend time in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado before snowbirding starts up again. Happy New Year!