Darcy arrives at 1:00 to ferry us to the airport for our 2:25 flight on Southwest, our favorite airline. As we stand waiting to board, we remember the only thing we forgot - free drink chits for our flight. Oh well, we do have cash and credit cards. An uneventful flight to Phoenix, arriving with a thud at the huge Sky Harbor Airport. A walk to claim our checked bags then drag them out to the rental car shuttle station. The busses to the rental car are huge and packed. We soon found out why. It is a 25 minute trip to the rental car terminal - basically the old airport. This old structure has now been turned over to all the car rental companies. Where, before, you stepped up to the airline ticket counters, you now step up to your chosen car rental company. In our case today, Hertz. We take the escalator down to the former parking garage, now given over to rental vehicles. We pick out a small white Buick SUV as our chosen chariot and fight our way out to I-10 East for the 100 mile trek south east to Tucson.
Traffic at 5:30 on a Friday evening is almost a gridlock. We finally clear the heaviest and join the flow south, eventually hopping off the three lane rush onto Tangerine Way. This quiet, two lane road leads us another 20 some miles to our final destination, the new home of Tom Nielsen and Kevin Rose, recently transplanted Omaha natives. Oh, yeah, also their master, Liam the black Scotty.
Although it is 7:45 by the time we arrive, the wine is open and breathing, Kevin has plated up two salads and prepped some wonderful Omaha Steaks for the grill, and we sit around chatting, lamenting the fool in Washington, and generally trying to set the world right. Needless to say, this discussion will continue for quite some time.
We finish up our repast and then step outside into the cool evening to admire the encircling mountains, admiring the huge cacti in their rear yard, surrounding the pool and the hot tub of which we expect to partake in the coming days. Tucson is a designated “dark city.” This means very few street lights, all evening lights must be down-pointing and very little light pollution. This makes for gorgeous nighttime skies with stars the likes of which we have not seen in years. The weather this time of year is cool in the evenings and 70F in the day. We are looking forward to our time in this high elevation city.
