Today, on April 13th, 1743, Thomas Jefferson was born. It's his birthday today. He was born into a wealthy family in Virginia, and he loved books and was interested in many different subjects, becoming an avid reader, like me. At 14 his father died leaving Thomas thousands of acres of land, and that's where he later built his mountain estate, Monticello. Pop told me to go there while we were in the D.C. area in August, but sadly we never made the trip. At 19 Thomas became a lawyer, at a very young age. He soon became popular and married a lady with the last name Skelton (funny because his birthday is on Friday the 13th and he married a lady named Skelton, close to Skeleton.) They had 6 children but only 2 survived to be adults. Sad. He entered politics and was elected in the House of Burgess, speaking and writing out against the unfair acts Britain had put on the colonies. He was an awkward speaker, but people said that he was a wonderful writer... like me. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, both encouraged the very young Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence, and Jefferson did so, after only 17 days. It was the draft, anyway. Then on July fourth, they officially made it the document of their nation declaring independence. After the war, Jefferson was appointed Secretary of State, and had heated debates with Hamilton, who was a Federalist. He wanted a Central Government and Jefferson wanted more rights to the states. But Washington sided with Hamilton, so Jefferson, still a young person- so it was known for him to do this... pouted and went back to Monticello.
Three years later he ran against John Adams and lost, but became his Vice President as was the law at the time. He disagreed with him though on certain issues, so then beat him out and became president four years later. In 1803 he supervised the Louisiana Purchase and bought all this land that he told Meriweather Lewis and William Clark to go explore. He was a wonderfully nice guy who did many things for our country, writing the Declaration of Independence almost single-handingly and buying all that land which now so much of the country lives in. If you live in Arkansas or Missouri or Iowa, North or South Dakota, Kansas or Nebraska,almost all of Montana and Wyoming, Oklahoma and parts of Louisiana, I'd be thanking Thomas Jefferson right now. I'm planning to read his biography soon actually. But to the blog now.
We went on where there was a Recreation hall building, which had snow on the roof and screened in porch stuff. Very nice. We peeked in there at some white plastic chairs, and then moved on. You couldn't really see through the openings, but oh well. We then made them go to the restroom and saw this big long half moon ditch that was very sunken in. I heard a noise and then Rebecca joined us. I guess she wasn't that tired indeed. Well, the dogs went to the restroom and then we went back inside the R.V., and did our morning routine of watching a little T.V. while we ate breakfast after wiping off the snow on our feet. During the walk back via another road we had talked about old times playing in the snow with neighbors and the Poje's. It was a good time talking of old times. Next we took showers and got dressed, as the others just blogged and did other things and Dad looked on the computer for a place to stay. He told us that we were going to Arizona today and would go back to the grand old town of Tucson (pronounced TOO-SAHN instead of TUC-SON). It would be a return for Mom, Rebecca and I. I'll tell you why when we arrive... in the blog, I mean. We're nowhere close to Tucson right now. But when I write about when we arrive I'll give you a little history of the Jordan family.
We unhooked and then drove off, hooking up the jeep. You know, it was funny because neither I nor Mom had ever been into the office of the Rose Valley R.V. Ranch. That was the same thing when we were in Roswell, New Mexico, only then Dad didn't go into the office either. EE-thur. I-thur. EE-thur, I-thur. Which one is your pronunciation?
There was a little bit of desert, but it wasn't long after doing some math and blogging, T.V. watching and Barbie-playing when we arrived at the State Sign of Arizona. As we get ready with our cameras and put on shoes and jackets, lets talk a little about New Mexico. In New Mexico, we saw the place which had been made so famous because of supposed alien landing, and also saw a great bird migration and cool habitats. We went to Carlsbad Caverns and saw the beautiful underground caves, and later went to White Sands via Roswell and saw some glittering gypsum sand. We went to a snow filled town in the clouds, where we saw our first snow and met an Irish man later in the evening at a bookstore. The next day we went to a space museum and went to Gila Cliff Dwellings, where we learned how Indians lived and talked to awesome cyclists. New Mexico didn't have any really big towns we visited, but it had some great science improvement, history (space and atomic bombs) and beautiful sites. It was used in the past, because of the lack of people, as nuclear training sites to see if their A-bomb would work. New Mexico wasn't like Texas with the big towns and ports and cowboy stuff, but it sure was unique. Okay, back to the blog, I think that we've gotten out now.
I always thought that the name Arizona was my favorite state's name, because I just liked the name, for some reason. Rebecca and I took our picture by the sign, and I was shocked to realize how like Texas's it was. It, firstly, had a star, and also red and blue and white. There was yellow coming out of the points to the star... well you'll see in the picture later on. It wasn't too big of a sign, and behind it was a rest stop that we pulled into. There were nice parking places and then also some stone buildings, restrooms, on the right, by a patch of not grass. But here's the best part: there was a mound of beige rocks that we took pictures of after walking the dogs. Really cool, all those rocks on top of each other, like the rulers of Rome, always trying to be on the top of the pack, where they have power. Greed has fueled want of power, which has fueled deceiving people, which has made violence possible...through the funding and helping of viewers like you... wait is this PBS? Okay, no. But back to the blog. After Dad had a little break, we were off to Tucson again.
When we entered the city I was shockingly surprised. It was a huge town, with everything from skyscrapers to little old people's housing, red tile roofs and the whole bit. We didn't go through it, but I saw the silver and glass huge buildings rising up, with some mountains surrounding this area. I guess as we approach the city it's time for a little history involving my mother's side of our family, the Jordan's. In the summer of 1950, my grandpa's father had asthma and was looking for an area with a dry climate in which to live in to make sure he stayed in good health. Pop, my grandfather, had just finished high school in a town we have visited on the trip, called Union City. They looked for places all around the desert-filled Southwest, in Alamogordo, New Mexico (been there) and parts of Texas. My great grandfather, whom I never had the privilege to meet, found a little town of 100,000 residents, called Tucson, named by the Indians to mean 'chuk-son,' meaning village under the shadow of mountains. There was a school there of roughly 5,000 students, the University of Arizona. Pop enrolled in U of A, and he left Tucson in 1954 when he applied to become an Air Force Lietanant. He moved to the Bay Area close to San Francisco, and stayed there for two years before going on in his life, becoming an employee for Kaiser Aluminum. He met my grandmother while training for a job in Ohio, and then she followed him to CA, where they married and had three children. My mom was almost five years old when they moved to Atlanta, where my Uncle Andy was born. The rest is history.
But Pop always had a dedication to Tucson, taking his family to Tucson to visit his parents, in an R.V. I'll talk about that more in a different blog post, the one after this one. Also, when I was eight, we went to Tucson with my flip video camera still in hand. That was my first video camera. We went to a desert museum where I saw all these live animals, and we stayed in a condo where in the mornings I would run down the block and back, trying to stay in shape. We saw a graveyard full of decommissioned planes and went to a place called Old Tucson where in the past they made cowboy movies, and we went in train cars, saw shooting shows, and went down an old horrible mine... and I still have the memories of all the skeletons gnashing out. Those were just some of the very cool things we did in the old town of Tucson. I'll never forget the experiences and memories gained there with my grandparents. For some reason Dad didn't go, and I don't know why. But now, as we came off the highway heading to the city, we were going to return to the city which started my grandfather's career and I was really excited. I remembered coming through this hotel onto the property where are condo was, and the ear popping ride where I read about Native Americans and read a story about a dog, all that school books in my back pack that weighed me down. I remembered going to Sabina Canyon, seeing an old mission called San Xavier del Bac, where there was a lot of paintings and also a gift shop. There I accidentally went into a girls restroom. It was memories like these that made my time at Tucson eternal.
But that's some of the history, in vague detail, of the Jordan's time at Tucson.
There was an R.V. park just off the freeway, outside of Tucson. Luckily we didn't have to go into the city with a motorhome of our size. It was down a hill, and we took an asphalt exit and then came down there. There was a yellow sign on there with a short cartoon gunslinger, and the R.V. park was called Prince of Tucson. On our right was several sites and some long cabins with driveways and trinkets in the yard that make the house or cabin more of a home. There was a wall on our left, many little cacti and then a driveway going down. We went down that a little bit before getting out of the R.V. with the engine still roaring. There was a three sided square building after a little courtyard in front of it, complete with some horseshoe and cricket places. Well, in the middle we peaked through some large glass windows, going on the right side of it into a door which had stickers and all the Good Sam and "This park was nominated for a president's choice award"-- let me just tell you, campgrounds aren't humble about their winnings--- and other things as we walked in. There was a counter going the full length of the room, and some clocks and doors to offices behind a bearded man and a white haired lady. It had all been done before. The brochures, the process of filling in paperwork, how many nights you'll be here, where did you hear about us, how many in your party, the map of how to get into the site, counting all the amenities, it had all been done before!!!!
It's get boring after a while so that's why sometimes I skip that process and blog.
But then again, it makes it fun 'cause sometimes they look different or have decorations.
What about when it's a chain like bland KOA?
You know what, I'm done arguing with myself. We signed up to all the stuff and the lady said that there was a laundry room through the door on the corner of the middle square side and the right one, to the laundry and recreation hall, bathrooms and such. The place seemed like a nice place, and we resorted to chit-chat about Vermont (above all things; the people were from there) and some other things as the people smiled awkwardly. The site on the map looked like it wasn't very good, because it was at the end... and, well the man said that he was sorry he had given us such a poor site, but an R.V. of our size couldn't fit in any of the other ones. What was bad about our site? Only time would tell. Thanking them, we got back into the R.V., very happy to be at Tucson once more. It was going to be such an adventure in the "Old Pueblo"(nickname of Tucson) and to explore all the things with a fresh anew memory. But Mom's cough was still haunting her nights and days, giving her what we liked to call, 'the creaking croak.' It was sad that she kept coughing and coughing and coughing, so would this contribute to the experience of our trip in a negative way? Read the next posts, reader, to confirm this scary possibility!
With the guy in front of us in a golf cart, we went around the exterior and then passed turning around where some lodges were, houses I guess they could be called, little ones, and saw a chain link fence with a big hole and many poles, white and metal, going up and down. Odd, what was this? The people hadn't mentioned it. Well, here we were now and we saw why the site was so bad. It was right on the exit to the freeway, right below the actual big road in which we all know so well to be so loud. And that wasn't the worst part of it. On the left side of our newly parked motorhome, was a blue dumpster, the only one in the park, in which people ride their cars over there or walk, making a big rumble as their trash falls into the metal container. But wait, there's more to make this offer even seem greater... we were right by a chain link fence and construction site, where every morning men with cranes and big KAT yellow machines move a sign that was held down by cinder blocks, creating great tension on the concrete, and then with all the dirt and the building and the flashing lights and all that building and knocking down.... ah, wasn't this to be the best and most serene of our locations for our R.V. in the past? I closed my eyes as the sweet tunes of these heavenly noises shifted through my brain.
We didn't use our outlet because it was far away from our electrical cord, but did use another one nobody was using. We had some people, with another big R.V., and they were from Canada, behind us. That night, I blogged and wrote about New Orleans, trying desperately to finish the blog post by the end of the day and be done with that, to talk about Dad's birthday the next day. Combined with the ride to Arizona and the time that Mom was at the laundry and Dad and Rebecca were washing one side of the R.V., I thought I could make it. Bored for a little while after posting the post and playing with my dogs, I asked Dad what I could do as they were cleaning the back of the R.V. with water, soap and other materials. He told me to go to the laundry mat, as I did, walking through the cabins and going up to the courtyard, where some really poky cacti where, nice and pink or green as they made imposing impressions on me. Which one do you think will win in a fight? A porcupine or cactus? Well, let's examine the facts. A porcupine is really small and doesn't have near as many sticks as the cactus does, but it has a tail, claws, teeth, and can move. So I'm betting on the thing that is living and breathing. Just me.
A woman was in the laundry mat with Mom when I entered. Too much white and swirling noises in there, too many circles in one place. There was a table in which she was seated. There was a hallway forward when I entered on the left, and a door to the left which was the recreation place, but people under 18 weren't allowed. I saw a bar, so nodded in agreement. The lady was nice, as I sat down and Mom told me not to because that was her husband's seat. She had glasses, brown hair that was fading into a grey, and was kind of plump. Nice enough though. She was incredibly interested in my eyes for some reason, oh and my hair color, blonde and all that. It was kind of scaring me... did she want to cut it off and take it and put it under her pillow? Hmmmm.... But I smiled as Mom told her about the trip and about homeschooling, as I folded clothes and put them in the white circular things. I hate laundry, it's so girly and I much wanted more to be out there helping Dad with the R.V. then I did wanting to do something that a lady out of Little Women or Pride and Prejudice might of done. But, I loved this time that I had with my mom, and Mom stated I was a good helper. We went through a place that had some billboards, a no-age-restricted one, as we went down a staircase and out to the R.V. I met the man earlier and he was gruff, white bearded and not very talkative.
That night we ordered pizza from a sarcastic teen over the phone who made us jump through a few hoops. When a female pizza woman arrived she apologized for his behavior and stated he was new. The pizza was really good, as we munched on it while watching Piers Morgan in his English accent ask Morgan Freeman about politics... as he does to every one of his guests. I slept up there with holes in my bed that deflated it... and I didn't want to sleep on a bed that was deflating. In the past we had looked for holes, but couldn't find any. Would we get another one? I don't know. But mine wasn't good, and so I slept on the couch with the sweet melodious tones of construction, cars on the highway, a train going past behind us, and people putting stuff in the dumpster.
WHOOSH
CRRRRRR.
BANG BANG.
Paradise.
And so ends the first night in our Tucson adventure,
Andrew.
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