We ended the last travel update when we arrived in Tucson. The main reason we were in Tucson was because of Saguaro National Park, which actually has two regions: the Rincon Mountain District and the Tucson Mountain District.
Of course, we visited both districts. We also had a surprising number of friends in Tucson. On our second day there, we met up with Kathleen's cousin, Christine and her partner, Adam. We had a great time catching up over dinner while watching the women's basketball team win the Pac-12 tournament in convincing fashion.
The next morning, we met up with a friend from Kathleen's undergrad days for breakfast. After that, we spent the most of the day at a library, followed by some time at a dog park.
For dinner that night we met up with the parents of one of Kathleen's best friends from grad school (and the officiant at our wedding), who snowbird down to Tucson in the winters. They were kind enough to feed us dinner, let us shower and do laundry at their rental, which had a beautiful view of the city and surrounding landscape.
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| Aiden mastering the "through" command |
After Tucson, we headed towards Joshua Tree National Park with a short stop at the Casa Grande National Monument. As we were getting to Joshua Tree, news about the coronavirus outbreak started to sound worse and worse. We decided it would be best to take a bit of a break from our travels and head home. So, we wrapped up Joshua Tree and drove north.
We stayed at some beautiful bureau of land management campgrounds in southern Arizona and California on the way to and from Joshua Tree. Before getting back to Oregon, we spent one night in Redding with Kathleen's aunt and uncle who had just moved up from SoCal.
Now we're sitting in Eugene, socially distancing ourselves from people, waiting for this epidemic to slow down. We're not sure yet when we will continue. We're a bit disappointed that we had to stop right as we were getting into the part of the country we were most excited for, but we know that we made the right decision.
