Day 10!

Chrissie says:
Today was an eventful day. But really, mostly everything didn't work out right. We wandered around Tucson, not really knowing where to go. Mike decided we should try to locate some of his former homes, since he lived in Tucson for a few years when he was younger.

After driving around Tucson for what seemed like forever (the city is really big and spread out), we found the apartment where Mike's sister, Christina, was born! We walked up to the apartment, and Mike was thinking of knocking on the door, but decided against it and took a picture instead. It was a cute place, and I'm glad Mike was able to see his old place. Turns out, the picture he took didn't really "take" on the camera, because once we got back to the hotel it was nowhere to be found. It made us both pretty mad.

Mike says:
We then tried to find the El Tiradito wishing well as our first real adventure of the day. It's a small fountain that is visited by locals in honor of a slain man who had been involved in a love triangle. They light candles and make wishes. Well, we found it- but it was completely fenced in due to reconstruction. Boooo.

Then we headed to San Xavier Mission to see the place. Mass was happening when we got there, so we visited the candle room and walked to the nearby Grotto Hill. On the hill lived a huge colony of Round-tailed Ground Squirrels that Chrissie got a few pictures of. After I was held captive by a church-goer who noticed my Red Sox hat and tried to convince me that they only won it all in '04 because he had the priest at San Xavier pray for the team, we headed in the general direction of Old Tucson.

Chrissie says:
But first we decided to get some food, we were hungry. We stopped at what seemed like a pretty local place, kind of in the middle of the desert. We were starved, and apparently the wings were good (they were on special) so we ordered some, really looking forward to them. They kinda sorta ... tasted like paper. Really dry, not tasty .... I guess after eating wings from Dillon's for the past year, it's hard to like any other wings!

After that, we drove to Saguaro National Park. The saguaros were awesome! I learned a little about them. Apparently some of these cacti can be up to 200 years old. It takes them a long time to grow, and many of them don't make it because the climate in that area is so harsh. BUT, if these trees do make it past childhood, they can be around for a long time. We took some pictures, and drove around. Did I mention we were in the desert?! It was about 102 degrees out there, and Alf is black, so we were definitely feeling the heat.

We then attempted to find another house that Mike lived at, but could only find the neighborhood, not the address.

Mike says:
After a brief argument regarding where to eat dinner, Alf decided he had had enough, and turned on his "Malfunction Indicator Light." Meaning "Turn me off, and forget dinner, you've got bigger problems."

So we left him in the hotel parking lot overnight to see if he might just be a little hot from traversing Tucson's arid roads all day. We ordered a pizza and fell asleep early, since I might have to wake up at 7 the next morning to visit the good old VW service department. In hindsight, we should have spent both days in the hotel... maybe a trip to the pool would have been ok.