Well, OK. Coming from the Pacific Northwest where the main colour is GREEN, I suppose I ought to appreciate the shades of the desert, for their subtle distinctions of pale watercolour blues/greys/tans/ and soft greens. They do add a certain desert atmosphere. and if we left it with nature it would be fine. But every single man-made domestic structure in the State of Arizona has been deliberately made to slide into this scenery seamlessly. Hence we have many many low slung, single story homes similarly dressed with a watercolour lack of distinction.
Well. A little bit of conformity is good. But a lot of it becomes boringly repetitive. Now that is not meant to offend the good people of Arizona. It is only shared with your Dear Reader because i know you understand that this is my blog and it exposes to you my own biases of taste and thinking so you will just have to put up with a bit of it. My bias, I mean. I am not your basic beige kind of person.
Moving on, parts of Arizona such as the route from Ajo to Tucson are a joy to the eye, an underused 2 lane road twisting and bouncing in a magical forest of cactus and succulents whose colour is invariably tasteful and beautiful. So let me show you a bit of that.
Below is your typical desert floor structure and flora as seen from the Interstate freeway.
And here is the lovely little desert Mexican-American town of Ajo.
The first shot is coming in towards the Mexicn style town square.
It has a Mexican Mission style church
More church
And other Mexican style architecture
And Mexican style domestic architecture
And a Mexican style plaza all dressed Mexican style for Christmas. Hopefully you see what I mean. Isn't this a sweet, stylish, comfortable, heart-warming little Mexican-style town? Now add a bit of Mexican colour and it would make the scene perfect (to my liking).
In opposition to the desert view taken from the Interstate, the shots below were taken on route 86 from Ajo to Tucson on one of the loveliest little 2 lane routes in the southwest. We take this route to avoid the 4 lane ribbon of dreariness that is Interstate 10. And it rewards us. Everytime.
This last shot shows you the actuality of the road ( a bit rough), and the traffic (mostly
non-existent).
After a few hours of dawdling across Arizona, we arrive at our County campground up on the desert of west Tucson. It was a lovely spot, had everything except internet which is why you are reading this after we have left the area.
Sorry Rick. But here we are setting up camp. Love the back yard.
Below is the road that connects the camp to Tucson through a mountain pass.
Over the pass, with Tucson in the far distance.
It is hard to show you the interesting Arizona housing, because they are often snugged into desert flora and almost invisible. But below is one example I managed to capture on the fly.
Below is a residential area of the city of Tucson, which shows you how well they do at hiding themselves. You'd never know this was a city.
Meanwhile back at the campground, Flossie is having one last snoop around with Rick as tomorrow early we leave Arizona behind and head south for Mexico.
Backyard behind camper…
Just one last note. During our entire stay in Arizona we froze. There was a cold front that had moved over the area and kept the day temperatures in the low 60s F and the night temperatures down close to freezing. Also, in Tucson we were above 3,000 feet in elevation which also made the nights crisp. So far, the night temperatures are not really higher than what we could expect at home. No doubt that fact has made my comments somewhat testy, as Dear Reader, I admit to being extremely fond of
warm weather, particularly in winter. We have high hopes for tomorrow as we start south and also downwards to sea level at San Carlos, Sonora Mexico.
