My last 2 vacation trips to AZ we headed north to Sedona to sight-see and hike up there. This time we decided to head south to Tucson. As it happens, it was a fortunate decision. By the time I got out to AZ, the north was burning with wildfires – many of the parks and sites were closed. My son’s landlord had been to the Tucson area. Much like my sister, Colin takes voluminous notes on where he goes, what you should see, what you should pay, what you should know BEFORE you go, and all the other information that can make the next person’s trip the best possible. Of course my son and I are among the group that don’t read directions, or only skim the directions, so sometimes even having fantastic direction can be lost on us.
Among the things I tend to forget to check is HOW FAR is the resort I am picking from where we need to be/go. One time I booked us into a GORGEOUS resort in Scottsdale (The Boulders), because I “remembered” from my first trip that it hadn’t taken us ‘that long’ to get to Scottsdale to go shopping. Well, the shopping was in SOUTHERN Scottsdale and the resort was in the NORTHERNMOST Scottsdale. 🙂 Not so convenient. This time I picked a resort that was listed in the wine country site as a recommended location. Yes – we’ll get back to the “wine country” bit. What neither the resort site nor that publicity site mentioned was that the resort was more than an hour from the wineries. 🙂 It WAS a nice resort – the El Conquistador Resort, and the drive was not that terrible when that day came. One thing we are learning about resorts is that they have far fewer room amenities than the good old business-traveler hotels. We’ve also learned that neither my son nor I have “resort dining palates”. All 3 Arizona resorts we’ve visited were beautiful. Gorgeous pools, gorgeous scenery, friendly staff – visually wonderful. None of them have had restaurants that served the food we like. Breakfasts are good, but then it’s pretty difficult to mess up breakfast. 🙂 Poolside food is good as well. But when it comes to dinner, there’s just not much there that we like.
Our plans were fairly basic for this trip. I’d not been feeling very well physically, and given that and the Arizona temperatures we didn’t want to overdo (another one of my superpowers – over-scheduling). We started with a very leisurely breakfast in Tempe, as well as a stop at the automotive supply shop to replace the windshield wiper I broke on my son’s car. 🙂 We had allotted 3 hours for driving to Tucson but the resort was – again – in the northernmost area of Tucson. I think it took maybe 2 hours or less – I don’t really remember exactly. I only remember that it was definitely less than expected. We spent Thursday afternoon hanging out at the pool (lovely) and relaxing. We found a nice restaurant with outdoor dining – Noble Hops in the Oro Valley. At that point all we wanted was a light meal. We opted for several appetizers and beer. The food and beer were very good; the service is meh. But we didn’t care about the service since we had a good table, good weather, lots of interesting dogs on the patio, and a lovely view. It was close to the resort as well. The crispy cauliflower was delicious. 🙂 I think we also had the hummus and the nachos. We headed back to the resort where I read and my son did whatever he did on his computer. 🙂 We rested up for Friday’s planned excursion to Saguraro National Park.
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