It's Ours!

We flew to Mesa, Arizona, late on Memorial Day and drove to Tuscon where we checked into the world's most disgusting Howard Johnson and zonked out.  The next morning we were off to Tubac to meet our new van's owner and take possession. 

Marc getting a primer on opening
and closing the pop-up.

Ken was kind enough to spend an hour walking us through every little detail about the operation of the van.  Thank God, because we were pretty clueless going in. We paid him, he signed over the title, we all headed to the DMV to get a temporary license (in Arizona, the owner keeps the plates and you have to get a $15 temporary out-of-state paper license, which Ken generously offered to pay for), and we were out of there, me in the rental car following Marc in the van.  

We headed straight to Performance Auto Works in Tucson.  Mike and his staff had performed the pre-purchase check of the van and were very thorough, so we headed back there to get some of the repairs done.  We discussed with Mike which repairs most needed to be done before we could head home to Montana, and that could be done by the end of the next business day.  And then we had a day-and-a-half to kill in Tucson.

He may look dubious, but
he's thrilled to be eating
lamb pilmene.

Since we live in an area with very little ethnic food, we try to search it out whenever we're on vacation.  I found a Russian restaurant in Tucson's alternative newsweekly, so that's where I took my Ukranian sweetie.  We also hit the dollar store, Goodwill, the liquor store, and Wal-Mart looking for essentials to stock the van.  That night we went to Punk Rock Tuesday at a smokeshop downtown. 

Wednesday we ventured to Saguaro National Park.  Marc had bought me a National Parks passport in Yellowstone for our 25th wedding anniversary just a few weeks earlier, and I was excited to get more stamps on this trip.

The saguaro were in bloom
and birds were everywhere.

Some of the fruits had been
popped open by hungry birds.

I work for Prickly Pear Land
Trust in Helena, Montana.
So I'm a sucker for
a prickly pear bloom.

Fellow member of my sun-loving lizard family.

Saguaro flower close-up.

My attempt at artsy
depth-of-field with a
barrel cactus.

Pictographs at
Saguaro National Park

That evening we picked up the van from Mike and paid the hefty bill, then headed back to Wal-Mart for groceries, and hit the road for home.  As we came through Phoenix at 9 p.m., it was still 96 degrees and going to be a sweltering first night.  Marc was driving and I was manning the Trip-Tik.  I saw that Agua Fria National Monument was less than an hour away and on BLM land ... free camping!  We pulled off the freeway, drove to the first spot we saw and popped the top up to go to sleep. It was just like we'd imagined it would be.