Tuscon

Our bodies had adjusted to the two-hour time difference, but adjusting to a different time in Arizona due to them not following DST has proven more difficult. We all woke up earlier than we wanted to this morning. Our first stop was McDonald's for breakfast. I could not believe how expensive the breakfast sandwiches were! I remember when you could get two egg McMuffins for $3 and later two for $4. At the restaurant in Willcox, they were over $5 each!  Thankfully, we had a gift card that covered our breakfast. I'm grateful we usually get a free breakfast at the hotels. Drury have excellent breakfasts. We're planning to get a free dinner at the Drury in Phoenix tomorrow night, but we won't be able to eat breakfast at Drury on Wednesday morning because our flight leaves too early in the morning. 

We all appreciated that we didn't have any lengthy drives today. Our first drive was a little less than one hour long. We stopped at the San Xavier del Bac Mission which was founded in 1692. The first one was demolished by an Apache raid in 1770. The structure we visited today was built from 1783-1797. Paul and I would have enjoyed taking a guided tour, but the kids don't enjoy guided tours anywhere near as much we do so we just did a quick self-guided visit. Next, we drove about 30 minutes to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. It's a rather unique site as it's a combination of a zoo, botanical garden, aquarium, and natural history museum. We spent more than two hours there. When we were driving out of Chiricahua yesterday, we had to stop twice so we wouldn't hit animals that were on the road. The first time it was on account of two wild turkeys. The second time it was due to a group (maybe 10?) of what we thought were wild pigs. At the Desert Museum we learned that they were javelinas which aren't pigs but are peccaries. We skipped the exhibit where you could touch a stingray because that cost extra, and we've done that many times at no additional fee at many aquariums. 

Our next stop was Saguaro National Park, which was only seven minutes from the Desert Museum. We watched the video in the Visitor Center, the kids completed their Junior Ranger books, we explored the cactus garden, I stamped our passports, and we bought a magnet, t-shirt (for Paul), and hoodie (for Nadia). We drove the Bajada Loop, which is mostly on dirt roads. We hiked three short trails. We saw many different kinds of cacti and on the last hike we saw petroglyphs. The temperatures were in the 90's while we were there. We had dinner at Texas Roadhouse that was extremely close to our hotel. The kids wanted ice cream from Sonic afterwards. We had discovered on Saturday night that shakes are 50% off after 5pm at Sonic. Oliver's peanut butter shake was only $1.84, for example. When I checked into the Days Inn, I discovered the room I had reserved couldn't be occupied because of an electrical problem that was discovered in that room this morning. The kids had been looking forward to it because it contained three queen beds plus a sofa bed. Nadia was going to sleep on something other than a couch for the second time on this trip, but due to the issue, they ended up putting us in a room with the standard two queen beds and a sofa. Paul and the kids took a dip in either the pool or hut tub after dinner. We've had a good vacation, and we are ready to go home in the near future. I miss Milo and also my own bed. The Seiberts have been doing an excellent job caring for Milo in our absence.