Category: January 2020

Back before my cancer diagnosis – during the week immediately preceding my cancer diagnosis – when I had absolutely no indication or expectation that routine tests would generate a cancer diagnosis – I had a very relaxing week vacationing with Darren.

I wrote this post back then, two days before everything suddenly changed. I wrote it, but I never posted it, because I wrote while we were driving home, and I didn’t have internet. So now I am posting it, even though it seems like it happened a very long time ago.

We met in Arizona for Darren’s 30th birthday.

The weather started out nice, although we had a horrible camping spot. It was more like the edge of a parking lot than a camping spot.

But the company was good 🙂

It was close to an excellent trail.

John only had the weekend, and he had to fly back to work on Monday, while Darren and I planned to stay the week. We spent John’s last night at a hotel near the airport because he had an early flight.

I was determined to use the hotel pool, but we didn’t arrive until it was already evening and too cold. The next morning was cold and windy. But right around check-out time the wind died down and the sun came out. But it was time to check out! We had two hours to kill before check-in time at our vacation rental. Suddenly I had an idea. Why not go ahead and check out on time, and then use the pool for two hours?

We had the camper van, so we could easily change afterwards. I was a little worried because I’m sensitive to chlorine and the camper van doesn’t have a shower, so I wouldn’t be able to shower off until it was time to check in at the vacation rental. But that was only a couple of hours later.

I also felt a bit like I was breaking the rules. I mean, logically, I was sure the hotel just needed us out of our room on time so they could get it cleaned and ready for the next guest. Surely they wouldn’t care if departing guests used the pool on their way out. Still, I half expected some uniformed person to come questioning!

We had the pool to ourselves and we really enjoyed it.

Next stop – vacation rental! We originally planned on camping the whole trip, but then I decided to get a vacation rental for two nights, to give us time to get cleaned up mid-trip. Turns out we were very lucky to have the vacation rental, because it rained that night and all the next day. It would have been miserable camping.

As it was, I was annoyed to be cooped up indoors on my vacation. But at least it was a nice place. And luckily the rain let up slightly that afternoon, so we were able to do a little bit of biking around. We brought our bikes all the way to Arizona and I was determined to use them! So we biked in the drizzle.

One thing I did manage to do was convince Darren to shave some of the beard. I’ve been chasing Darren around with a razor for years. It’s not as short as I’d hoped (which would have been no beard at all), but it was a big improvement. It looks great!

This is my new favorite picture of Darren:

The next morning we checked out of the vacation rental and went to the Desert Museum in Tucson. I had originally been somewhat reluctant, because I had imagined a boring indoor museum and I didn’t want to be stuck inside. I came to Arizona for the sunshine!

It turns out the Tucson Desert Museum is mostly outdoors, although it has some indoor exhibits. It’s sort of like a botanical garden plus a small zoo, a very small aquarium, and even a cave.

For some reason I thought this sign was hilarious.

These are eels. I’ve decided I’m not fond of eels. They seemed creepy.

Seahorses don’t seem real. I keep waiting for that moment when I realize it’s all a hoax, like Santa Claus.

This cave didn’t seem real either, but maybe it was.

I didn’t take any photos of the animals. People were the most excited about one, lone, bored bobcat. But we used to regularly see wild bobcats wandering around in our yard in Placitas. So I was underwhelmed. There was a coyote too, which was remarkable only in how well fed he was! I’ve seen tons of coyotes, but I don’t remember ever seeing a fat one before.

The javelina were sleeping and didn’t smell nearly as bad as the wild one who visited us last time we went to Tucson. A javelina (pronounced ha-va-LEE-na) is a peccary. It looks sort of like a black pig.

Oh, fun fact! Apparently groups of javelina all go poop in the same place. I mention this because last time we were staying in a vacation rental in Tucson, a wild javelina positioned its butt right up against the fence in order to poop in the dog pen! We thought it was crazy but apparently javelina go where the others go! Poor John had to clean up after the javelina as well as our dogs (or else risk looking like we left our own dog poo for the rental manager to deal with).

My favorite parts of the museum were the agave garden and the cactus garden.

I was excited to hear there was a hummingbird aviary, but we only saw two humming birds. And there were mostly mourning doves in the bird aviary. I honestly can’t tell the difference between a mourning dove and a pigeon. And there was one lone bee in the bee area.

I guess that’s what we get for going in January. At least it wasn’t hot! We had our jackets on and it was threatening to rain. Overall I would definitely recommend it though. It was nice to walk around and look at everything. After the desert museum, we fortified ourselves by going out for Indian food in preparation for going back to the campground and “roughing it”. This time we had a vastly better campsite.

The weather was still threatening, but looking somewhat more hopeful.

The next morning was entirely sunny and we went on a relaxing hike. It was an easy trail – much less elevation than the first hike.

And we even got one last bike ride in before it was time to head home. I really love Tucson’s loop trail for bike riding. We never go to Tucson without our bikes!

Houston also happened to have a boat show on the same day that we went on our urban kayaking trip. At first I was enthusiastic about the idea of a boat show, until I realized it was an indoor boat show. I much prefer wondering around a marina in the sunshine, but oh well.

A 450-horsepower outboard is a bit extreme in my opinion.

Four of them on the back of one boat is bordering on obscene. I don’t even want to tell you how much fuel those would go through.

Here’s one of the few boats I liked.

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That cute little wooden sailboat was over in the corner with the weird things, like this car that’s not even a boat.

This sailing outrigger was kind of cool.

As was this foot-paddling kayak.

Here is a trailer that holds a kayak, a bike, and a platform to set up a tent. Kind of cool, but it seems like you’d be better off putting your bike on back of your vehicle, your kayak on top, and your tent on the ground. Trailers are a nuisance.

They had only one, maybe two sailboats. I know a little bit about sailboats, so I took a good look at this one.

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And oh, hey, a hot tub. Whatever.

Here’s some sort of trimaran for fishing.

But mostly it was just large power boats, starting at about $70,000 and averaging I’d guess about $250,000. If I had that much money, I’d buy another rental.

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That’s a head (toilet) on the left. They’re often behind impossibly small looking doors, hiding a reasonably sized (small but useable) facility below.

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Pontoon boats

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The most expensive boats were a million dollars. Yeah, we’ll take that one.

ooh, pretty. It looks like artwork.

No, we didn’t buy a boat, lol.

The day after Christmas we headed down to Texas, dropped the dogs off with Monica, and continued to the gulf coast where we had rented a little cabin.

The word “shack” comes to mind, but it was a brand new shack, very nice inside.

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Which turned out to be a good thing because after the first 24 hours, our weather turned lousy.

I got some good pictures of our first day though. Here’s the dock, which was the entire reason for the trip. John grew up fishing in Minnesota and doesn’t get to fish much in the deserts of New Mexico.

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Shortly after arriving we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

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John does catch-and-release, and we hadn’t had time yet to buy any local fish, so we figured for our first night we’d just have a frozen pizza. Turns out there wasn’t an oven, giving a new meaning to the term, “pan pizza”.

The next morning was windy and cold, but I was determined to get into my kayak. The wind was coming from the north (across the land), so the water wasn’t very choppy.

It was cold, so we kayaked in our rain gear. Rubber boots would have been better than hiking boots, but I don’t own any. I would if I lived in that region.

By noon on our first full day there it clouded up.

The rest of the trip mostly involved walking in the rain and fishing in the rain. One time we bought some fish and grilled in the rain. The fish was excellent – the grilling experience not so much. Sometimes we gave up and sat around in the cabin.

Here we are taking a ferry in order to walk in the rain somewhere else.

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They drive their cars on the Texas coast. Typically I would have had something snarky to say about that, but it’s not like the coastline was beautiful or anything anyway. (Ok, I guess that was snarky.)

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John found this interesting.

And we had to walk a long way out on the jetty – why? Because it was there.

Later we parked along the water front to go on a little walk in what was supposed to be a natural area. As we walked along the road to where the trail started, some kind local was so concerned about us walking in the wind and rain that they stopped and offered us a ride.

The natural area was underwhelming.

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I don’t know what that oil rig thing in the background is. All I can tell you is that it’s massive. It’s far larger than it looks in the pictures.

And it was right next to a water front residential area.

I love this picture, it’s surreal:

I can almost but not quite imagine what this must look like in the summer.

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Here’s John fishing in the dark in the rain.

On our final morning I was determined to kayak a second time. After all, we had brought our kayaks all the way down there from home. It was windy and cold, and this time the wind was coming from the south, across the water. We had swells and some wave action. Here’s photos of standing on the shore evaluating the wisdom of going out in that.

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We decided to go for it, but I didn’t try to take any photos while kayaking. We definitely got wet.