Trip to Tucson

Last weekend we were in Tucson, and I have a lot of pictures to post from that trip! I've been busy working on Carter's playroom since we got home, and didn't have a chance to download all the pictures until now.

Doug had a business trip to Tucson, and Carter and I went with him to hang out at the hotel and spend some time in the town where we lived for 14 years before we moved to Austin. We were there less than a week after the shooting, and our hotel was just a few miles up the road from the Safeway where it happened, so that was weird. We drove by that Safeway several times a day, and saw all the flowers and reporters standing outside and everything.

We stayed at the El Conquistador resort, where Doug's meetings were. I've never stayed there before, and it was actually really nice. The weather was gorgeous, in the mid-70s the whole time, and we had a blast.

On Friday night we went to one of our favorite restaurants, El Charro. We got Carter some churros to dip in chocolate for dessert, and he loved them!



That night we hung out by the pool for a little while, where they have firepits. Carter enjoyed that. I really want to get a firepit to go by our pool.



On Saturday, we met a friend for lunch and then we all went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum for the afternoon. I haven't been there in at least a decade, so it was a lot of fun. Carter really enjoyed it!

Here he is touching a lizard.







Looking at prairie dogs.





This ground squirrel's burrow was behind the glass. Carter loved watching it!



He also loved climbing through this narrow cave for kids.





And of course, some yummy ice cream!



I bought him a copy of a famous Tucson children's book at the gift shop, The Three Little Javelinas. it's the Three Little Pigs set in the Sonoran Desert, and it's really adorable! Carter quickly became obsessed with it, and we must have read it 100 times already.

We saw some other Tucson highlights over the weekend. On Monday Carter and I went to Sabino Canyon, which has a tram ride up several miles to the top of the canyon.





We got off the tram and walked some. At least until Carter started insisting I carry him, at which point we got back on the tram, heh.





We got off closer to the beginning of the canyon and played for a while in a sandy spot.





After the canyon, we met a friend of mine from grad school, Guada Lozano, and her two boys who are close to Carter's age. The boys played and ate ice cream while Guada and I caught up, and I didn't take pictures! :-(

After that we drove down to Sahuarita to hang out with Shellie Shipley (who was in my Up With People cast) and her son, who is about a year older than Carter. The boys had great fun playing while we chatted and drank beer and enjoyed the gorgeous view from her back patio. We later met her husband for dinner at their favorite local Mexican place, and generally had a blast! Again, I forgot to take pictures. Carter was exhausted when we left, and was asleep almost before we made it to the freeway to head back up to Tucson.

On Tuesday morning we went to the Reid Park Zoo, which is a really fantastic little zoo. We rode this train around the park first.



Carter is starting to understand that when we take pictures, he's supposed to smile and pose. The results are sort of awkward at the moment!









Of course, what he loved doing the most was pushing the stroller around!



After the zoo, we headed over to the University of Arizona to surprise my PhD adviser, but Carter was so cranky that we ended up cutting the visit a bit short. I had wanted to get some pictures of him on campus, but this was the best I could do.





Doug needed the rental car that afternoon, so we went back to the hotel and went swimming for the rest of the day. The hotel's pools were all heated, and we had tons of fun swimming!



There was also a great kids' pool.



There was a waterslide that Carter was two inches too short to ride, but one attendant let him go down it once, and he had a blast! He cried when I carried him back to the pool. There was a nice hot tub, and we spent quite a lot of time in it too! It was so much fun to be in a warm place where we could go swimming and relax.

We headed home on Wednesday morning, while Doug went to Phoenix for more meetings. It was great to be back in Tucson. It's such an amazing place, and it's changed a lot since we moved away. But wow, the desert is so amazingly beautiful, and it was fun to be back there for a few days. :-)