Sunday, March 13, 2011

Tubac and Madera Canyon, AZ

 

We left Patagonia Lake Friday afternoon for a short 42 mile drive to Mountain View RV Ranch a few miles north of Tubac. This is not the greatest RV park, but since it was a Passport America park and only $14.50 a night, we decided to stay. This is the first time we’ve had someone try not to honor the Passport discount, but she finally conceded.

We did meet a nice couple from Florida here who just bought this 1969 Ultra Van with a 110 Corvair engine. It has over 300,000 miles on it and they said it runs great. They bought it in California and have already driven to Florida and back in the few months they’ve owned it. We were a bit jealous since they get 15 mpg.

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We spent a couple hours walking around Tubac, a neat little community that was established in 1752 as a Spanish presidio. It is now an artist colony, with galleries, studios and shops lining the streets. We were really impressed with the diversity and quality of the items for sale. Not the typical stuff we normally see in the tourist towns. If we had a house and yard, we would have been tempted to buy all kinds of things.

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Yesterday we took a drive to Madera Canyon, 24 miles northeast, and only 35 miles south of Tucson. Chuck and Carla drove through after lunch the other day and decided to come back and stay for the weekend. The forest service web site says the RV length limit is 22’, but Chuck assured us there were sites long enough for us when they got there on Friday. SInce we weren’t ready to go and would have had an hour and a half drive, we were afraid the sites may be taken so we opted to stay here. After visiting them there yesterday we’ve decided to spend tonight at Madera Canyon since we should be able to get a site after the weekend campers leave today.

We took a 5 mile loop hike to several springs. It was quite a steep climb for a couple long miles, and an even steeper and rockier descent, but we took it slow and talked and laughed a lot, so it didn’t seem so bad.

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The views were great and since we climbed to 6,000 feet, it was cool and shady. It’s really a beautiful area, and it was nice to do a hike with trees for a change.

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4 comments:

  1. Glad to sea ya discovered that tobacc place. Bein' from Kentucky and all, me and Nilda's got a hole passel of cousins that smoke. If'n they ever want to join in with this fulltime lifestye we'll be sure to tell them that might be a good place to camp, what with everything there havin' somethin' to do with tobacc.

    I.M. glad to be a new reeder of yours.

    Me and Nilda's blog

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  2. What beautiful pictures. And that van is amazing! Did you get to see the inside at all?

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  3. I.M. Thanks for following along. Yer blog is also very entertaining.

    Donna K. Yes, we got to see the inside of that RV. Unfortunately it was pretty "cluttered"(to be nice), so we didn't want to take any pictures.

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  4. I had UV 423 in Tubac a few weeks ago.

    There is free camping just East of Patigonia in a National Park if you get back down there.

    Great coffee shop in town with WiFi.

    Plan to spend more time there in 2012.

    Maybe other Winter UV folks would like to join me.

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