Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: Waves, Wine & Warmth (2018)
Onwards to Tucson
I slept a little later than the previous day, waking up just before 7am. In due course I had the usual Towneplace complimentary breakfast, packed my things, and checked out around 9:20. There was more high cloud around this morning, and the forecast strong winds were already noticeable. I quickly got onto I-10 and while there was plenty of traffic, today it at least kept moving.
My first stop, a considerable distance along the road to Tucson, involved making a short diversion off the interstate to visit Pinal Airpark. As well as being the local airfield for the eponymous county, this is also one of many aircraft 'boneyards' in the southwestern USA - places where commercial airliners come for long-term storage or to be broken up. This place is not a tourist attraction as such, and my understanding is that previously installed gates on the public road had only recently been removed. The situation is further complicated by the presence of a nearby military base, and my observation that the area of interest was very much a working scrapyard. I restricted my activities to pulling over off the road at carefully selected spots and taking photos through the fence. Several vehicles passed, including military ones, and nobody batted an eyelid. They had probably seen it all before.
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Taking up my journey once again, I stopped to fill up with fuel at Marana, and again to refuel myself on the outer edge of Tucson. For the record, I enjoyed a very tasty Italian sausage and pasta dish at a branch of Boston's Pizza, a short distance from I-10 and just inside the city limits of my destination.
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I found the Hilton after a couple of easily corrected false moves while navigating the city streets. Arriving around 2:20 in the afternoon, I was fortunate to be able to check in early. With some spare time on my hands - I had no plans for the rest of the day - I decided to get organised for the remainder of the trip and wash the necessary clothes in the hotel laundry. There was a bit of a hiccup getting underway with this chore, as the washing machine's water supply had been turned off. As ever on these occasions, however, I was provided with a golden opportunity to catch up with both my trip notes and my reading.
Dinner at the high-end, in-house Italian
restaurant was very tasty - I had gnocchi - but having a
noisy bar as its centrepiece struck me as a terrible idea, totally
destroying the ambience that would otherwise have existed.