Tucson, Az

Today we went from Benson to Tucson. It is only 50 miles, so the trip took about an hour.

We are out in the country to the West of Tucson, at a place called Justin's Diamond J. This is a large campground, that is somewhat of an improved desert experience. We have water and electric and sewer, but the sites are not much to look at. At least ours isn't.

Since we are only here for a day or so, they gave us a site out near the front road, where the Highway is driving us crazy with passing cars. Hope that slows down some before we go to bed.

The big thing that has Loyce concerned is the lack of a public bathroom. We have to use our camper bathroom for all services, and she likes to use a campground bath house. So we may not stay here for more than one night.

We do have our eye on Casa Grande as a destination, and perhaps we will go check that out in the morning.

We spent the day setting up, and then trying to get hooked up to the internet. The wifi at the camp here will allow you to connect, but then says that it has limited or no connectivity. You cannot see the internet at all when you are connected. They also have a little linksys router that sits on the office desk, for the staff to use to connect.

I found out from one of the motorhome campers over closer to the office, that the little wifi is the only thing that works here. I am connected tonight by using my repeater router sitting on the roof of the trailer outside. It can barely see that desktop router, but I am connected to it, at a sloooow speed. So no pictures tonight.

The actual grounds have been improved with rock that is about 3 inches in diameter. The site is hard to walk on and is almost impossible for our 14 year old dog to negotiate. She is blind, and thinks she is on a cliff when she feels the rocks under her feet.

So while others have said, and have had positive experiences with this location, at least for us, it isn't working too well.

I did set out the satellite dish and have the direct TV running on all of our subscribed channels, since there is no cable TV here either. I was surprised that we could not pick up digital TV with our roof top antenna. We are far enough from town, that even the analog TV was mostly snowy with exception of two or three channels.

On a positive note, it is much warmer here in Tucson. At Benson, we were at 4,000 feet and the mountain air is cold. But Tucson is at 2,500 feet and it was above 80 this afternoon. It will require some heat before morning, but both the electric and the propane heaters will not run all night, like they did last night.

Camping is supposed to be and experience, and this is one of them.

Retired Rod