We’re on the hunt for a place where we don’t have to wear our coats all the time. This means we’re still heading south. Today we drove toward Tucson. When we stopped at a rest area for lunch and some play, we breathed a big sigh of relief. Sunny and warm!

I honestly thought of Arizona as a pretty flat state. However, no matter which direction you look out across the desert, you can almost always see some sort of hill or mountain off in the distance.

We posted up at Catalina State Park for a couple nights. This is easily the most scenic campground we’ve stayed at. As we were walking around the park later, a neighbor commented “You have the best site in the campground!” Kyle said “Thanks! We booked it last night!”

We are backed right up against the Santa Catalina mountains, in the middle of a bunch of hiking trails. While nature surrounds us, all we have to do is go across the street to take advantage of a multitude of shopping essentials.

Speaking of which, I was making a run for groceries when I looked up and saw the mountains practically on fire. I texted Kyle to see if he could jump out of the camper and take some photos. The glow was unreal, bouncing off the mountains and the clouds. I’ve never seen anything like it.

We were having such a nice time here that we ended up increasing the length of our stay – twice. We had to move campsites each time, but it was worth it. Early one morning, an ambulance went by with sirens on, and that set off all the coyotes in the park. The howling was eerie.

From Catalina State Park, we took a day trip to Saguaro National Park.

The park is divided into two completely separate sections, and the west park is the main park. It was…okay. What we’re finding with these parks is that they tend to be drive-through parks, and a lot of car time is hard on the toddler. We need to be able to let him run around, and a landscape covered in cacti is not very toddler-friendly either. The scenic drive (Bajada Scenic Loop) through Saguaro NP is unpaved and very rough, which is pretty uncomfortable for my distended baby belly.

There was one short hike I was pretty excited about, and that was the short trek up Signal Hill to see the petroglyphs.

I’ve read that there are four main types of cactus in Arizona, and I captured them all in one shot here: saguaro, barrel, cholla and prickly pear. For some reason, the ocotillo isn’t on the list, but that happens to be my favorite plant around here (it’s the tall skinny stick plant appearing above the barrel cactus on the left side). Wikipedia tells me the ocotillo is only semi-succulent, so maybe it doesn’t quite qualify as a cactus.

Back at our campground, we covered some of the local hiking trails. The biggest one we did was a canyon loop trail.

Part of the territory was burned by a massive wildfire in 2020. We can still see the effects of the Bighorn fire, like the skeleton of this saguaro.

The hike was gorgeous, although we did have to cross a pretty wet sandy area. Thank goodness it’s warm, because it was almost impossible to keep our feet dry.

Since we extended our stay, Kyle’s mom bought us an early Christmas present: tickets to the Tucson Zoo. We made a day of it!

This is an African Crowned Crane.

The kiddo had the most fun watching the peafowl, which freely roamed all over the zoo.

After the zoo, we stopped for food, then headed to an event in downtown Tucson. The contemporary art museum was supposed to be open late for an artisan’s market. We managed to find some free parking (I feel like that’s a fun challenge I take on for any of our urban explorations) and walked to the museum.

The event was actually outdoors and very small. It was quite cold out, we seem to bring the cold with us no matter where we go – next week Tucson is supposed to be about 15° warmer. I’m only mentioning any of this because while we huddled by an outdoor fire, I started talking to some strangers about a burning question I had.

My first inkling that I was making a horrible faux pas was when we chatted with some hikers at Saguaro National Park. The stranger at the art museum confirmed that I was pronouncing saguaro incorrectly, it should be “sah-whar-o.” Yikes, what a tourist mistake. Okay, tell me what else I’ve been doing wrong. Cholla is “choya,” just like it would be in Spanish. At least I haven’t been saying that one out loud. We covered a couple other local words, so now I won’t sound quite so dumb if I talk to anyone else around here!

This brought us to the weekend. It’s still so chilly, so we’re still heading further south. “This is about as far south as you can get!” said our neighbor at the state park. Uh, Mexico is RIGHT THERE. Not only that, but we are mere hours away from beautiful beaches on the Sea of Cortez. We called a beachfront campground to see if they had availability for a one week stay, and they said yes without even asking us which dates.

We were getting our paperwork in order, and discovered something horrible. We have no truck registration along. Two months and 10 states into our trip, and we’ve been traveling without our truck registration the whole time? Kyle tore apart the entire truck and camper looking for that tiny slip of paper. Since it’s Saturday the offices are closed, so we can’t call the Secretary of State. And, in some weird technological glitch, Kyle had just renewed our vehicle registrations online, and now the system won’t let him back in because he’s “not allowed to make changes for 7 days.” So we can’t print out a new copy of it. Kyle feels absolutely awful, since he is fastidious about keeping our vehicle registrations in their respective spots as soon as they arrive.

We had to quickly book another night in the park, since our plans are now up in the air. Eventually Kyle was able to get a copy of our registration and print it, along with some other necessary paperwork. We still need to purchase vehicle insurance for Mexico, as it would be a huge mistake to enter the country without it. Due to the cost of such short-term insurance, a cheap Mexico beach-side campsite is actually going to cost us about what we’d pay in the US. But this isn’t about the money, it’s about the weather and the adventure.

Here we goooooooooooo!