26 March 2006 Sunday

We woke this morning to a bird serenade.  We just lazed around the camp and kind of took a day off.  We worked on the computers for a little while.  We’ve got an additional battery and inverters so we can run the computers while we’re on the road.

Around noon, we went into the city of Tucson to find a restaurant that was recommended to us called “El Charro”.  This place is a Tucson owned and operated restaurant since 1922.  We ordered a sampler platter to share and were stuffed!  They are famous for “carne seca” which is marinated beef, dried there on site in the hot desert sun, then dehydrated and cooked.  We saw the beef out back, drying high on a crane above the restaurant.  Racks and racks of it, in screened boxes, drying in the sun.  While we were downtown, we went to the Fourth Avenue Street Fair and walked around for about an hour or so.  We saw some cool stuff, but we can’t take it with us.  

We came back to the west district of Saguaro NP and did a short walk around some CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) buildings that were built from the local rock and fit right into the surroundings beautifully.  However, the locals had trashed them with graffiti.  We walked up to an area with petroglyphs, but a different tribe left markings different than some we’ve seen before.  

When we got back to camp, we had new neighbors that came over to chat.  Pam and Mark (and the little dog Ziggy) were admiring our truck setup.  They’re from Santa Fe, NM and heading for a week in Mexico.  They told us about some missions built in the 1700’s that weren’t too far away and we should see them.