Tucson cools off

Hi everyone, we're finally back blogging. We've endured 105 degree days since we arrived here, and the last few days we've had seasonal temps of high 80's. We were walking Ben at 6 am every day, and then again after sundown, otherwise he would burn his feet. Now we can wait until 7 or even 8 before he has to go out!

Because of the heat, we really hadn't been doing a lot, but we were out house hunting. We found a nice mobile home in a 55 and over park, and made an offer on it. It was listed for $12000, but we offered what we thought it was worth: $5000. Unfortunately the owner lives in Washington, and was traveling and couldn't be reached. It took two weeks to find out our offer was turned down. Kinda strange, since the owner is paying $500 a month to have it sit there, and its been like that for over a year!

Anyway, after that frustrating wait, we decided to look further afield, and also to look for a house on a property, not a mobile home park. There are few such homes in our low price range in Tucson, but lots of them in Phoenix. So, on Saturday we drove to Phoenix, and did drive-by's of listings we'd looked up online. We met up with a realtor, and we're going to look at 5 of them with him tomorrow.

Yesterday we went to the Tucson Meet Yourself fair downtown. This is a multi-cultural fair, spread around several venues in Tucson Centro. We sampled a nice Thai combination dish: Chicken satay, Pad Thai, yellow curry chicken and rice for $6. We also tried sweet potato pie at a native booth. A lot like pumpkin pie. Then we had to have some of the Afghan lamb kabobs wrapped in nan bread, also $6. That was very tasty.

We watched quite few classes from a local Latino dance school performing on a big stage. We also demolished a huge Mexican fruit cocktail. Giant pieces of melon, apple, mango, orange, strawberry and cucumber. We heard a nice blues band at one of the venues, too. We went into St. Augustine's Cathedral, and sat for a few minutes of the service. Also in attendance at the fair were the local lowrider clubs. Some really well prepared cars were on display. I don't get the lowrider thing, but it is very big down here.

After we'd had enough of the crowds at the fair, we went to the Jewish Cultural Museum. It is housed in the original synagogue built in Tucson in 1908. Jews started coming to southern Arizona in the early 1800's. Many of them were from Germany, originally going to California to serve the miners of the gold rush, then moving east to Arizona to set up businesses to serve the military and the ranchers. By the time Arizona became a state in 1912, some of the Jewish businessmen had become powerful in the community. There were many more Jewish men than women in Tucson, so men would often marry local Mexican ladies. Today, Tucson has a large Jewish population, and is served by 13 synagogues.

Next week we plan to go out for a celebration dinner. First, we are celebrating the 21st birthday of our daughter Miranda, and we are thrilled for her! Second, this will mark the anniversary of our first year on the road. We are still hoping to do a couple more jobs before shutting down jet car operations for the winter.

We've attached pictures of the Tucson Meet Yourself activities. Stay tuned...