Mar 7, 2023 (Tue)
10:00 am Green Valley, AZ
We were practicing music yesterday, How Great Thou Art, a hymn from the late 1800’s, which is second only to Amazing Grace in its popularity—even though it’s based on a Swedish hymn. Gini remembers singing this with her family at the Forest Home Christian conference retreat center in Southern California.
In any event, Diana exclaimed that this hymn was one of her Dad’s favorite hymns, and Gini got excited and said we should make a video and that led to where we are this morning: We’re in the den in Diana’s house, with our instruments, practicing How Great Thou Art in preparation for our video.
Two takes later, as Pat (our videographer) is sending it off to Diana’s Dad, everyone notices that Robert is still in his pajamas.
“Hey man, I’m a musician and a writer—I don’t get dressed before noon!”
11:00 am Pat & Diana Spa & Resort
Now we’re lounging about in the outdoor pool and the sunshine. We’re feeling as though our mission to escape the cold and wet has been successful—certainly today! For a brief second, we consider getting our own pool, but then we remember that right now, we’d be scraping ice off of it, and ugh.
The Pool Guy shows up and doesn’t even need to throw any chemicals in—pools these day seem to be all salt water, and much less fussy than olden-time pools. (A brief stroll through Wikipedia reveals that they’re still chlorinated, but in a different way than the pools of our youth that burned our eyes and turned our hair green.)
Fun Fact: In the summer around here, you can’t use your outdoor swimming pool because it’s too hot. A fellow down the road has installed an air conditioning unit to cool down his pool so he can swim in it.
Living the warm life in Green Valley!
1:00 pm Check-out time
We are sorry to leave the Pat & Diana Spa, Resort, and Italian ristorante. The staff (Pat) even helps lug our belongings out to Harvey. One of the difficulties when traveling with Harvey is when we decide to stay someplace else. We don’t have any luggage, so we end up making about 12 trips out to Harvey to get everything (“Oh, I forgot my shoes!”).
We bid a fond farewell to our hosts and recommended this to anyone in the neighborhood. They’ll even play Pickleball with you!
Our hosts, Diana & Pat and the view from their backyard
1:30 pm Lying Chevron, Green Valley, AZ
Last night when we were out for Mexican dinner, Robert’s sharp eyes noticed a Chevron station that advertised in big, bold, letters, “We have propane!”
You might recall our Quest for Propane earlier, and we’re starting to get low. Since we’re not in a hurry, what better time to get a refill? So we zip over there and pull up to the propane tank and Gini starts heading inside to get the propane guy to come out (for some reason, nobody is really eager to let Robert pump the explosive gas by himself).
“Wait, Gini, come back!” hollers Robert as he notices a folded over and ruffled piece of paper. Lying Chevron, is what we’re calling them now… Grrr.
This sign needs to be as large as the sign proclaiming that they have LOTS of PROPANE
2:00 pm Voyager RV Resort, just southeast Tucson, AZ
After our experience last week of trying to find an RV spot in Phoenix, we’re a little apprehensive about getting one here. If anything, there are more RV’s around Tucson than we’ve ever seen before.
So Robert jumped on the first place that let him reserve a spot on-line (tip to companies: young people aren’t the only ones who don’t like using the telephone to call businesses).
“Whew! I got us in!”
And then we arrive to RV City—667 spots for all sizes and colors of RV’s. There’s big ones, there’s bigger ones, there’s huge ones. They have their own security staff that comes around in a golf cart and escorts you to your spot, so you don’t get lost.
There’s a hotel, three swimming pools (one indoors), a spa, two bars (we think), a restaurant, a freakin’ beauty parlor for crying out loud. We’re a bit overwhelmed, but our spot has everything we need.
We seem to be the only small RV on our street (yes, there are streets with 30 to 50 RVs on them). Fortunately, we’re walking distance to most everything, because—unlike everybody else—we didn’t bring a golf cart, or an electric bicycle, or a scooter.
View from the back of Harvey to RV City
2:45 pm
It’s finally warm enough that we can turn on our A/C and see if it works!
Aah—it does! This lasts about five minutes before one member of our party says, “I’m freezing! Turn it off, please!” so it works pretty good. We hope we have lots more opportunities to use it.
8:30 pm
One thing they don’t have is camp-wide Wi-Fi. Well, there is camp-wide Wi-Fi, but they want $40 a month (plus install fee) and we’re only here for the night.
But we have found the thing that works best (well, if there’s no easily available Wi-Fi) is to just tether to our phones. The cell coverage is good enough most places (“We’re not in the Yukon!” proclaims Robert) that it works just fine. And we wouldn’t be surprised if RV City had its own cell tower (or two!).
We settle down for a good night’s sleep in RV City, ready to get back to boondocking tomorrow!
The sunset over RV City from inside Harvey
Map
How we got here
Gini & Robert
Harvey Staff