Wishing all our American friends a very Happy Thanksgiving!
This was at the trailhead...interesting...
Time to relax!
After stuffing ourselves, we carried on with the rest of our chores for the day...grocery shopping (including filling our drinking water containers) and fuelling up the truck...$3.49/gal after a 10 cent rebate at Fry's gas station
Steve finally did it and the geocache opened...
The next one was called 'Run, Geocacher, Run'...You must play a running game and score 50 points against the computer to gain entrance to the container and log. It was like playing Nintendo...running and pressing the button to make the figure jump. It took both of us a number of tries...but again, Steve finally succeeded! He actually got up to 100 points which wasn't required...I think he was just having fun playing!
Friday (Nov. 29) was chore day...as Steve says, everyday can't be all fun and games! We started with laundry. Finding a laundromat was near impossible in Tucson...at least one fairly close to us...so we ended up going to Catalina about 7 miles north of us.
It was after 12-noon by the time we were finished and we were hungry...so I suggested we go to the nearby Olive Garden for lunch. It could be an early birthday lunch since we won't be anywhere near an Olive Garden on my actual birthday. It was excellent! We both had one of their $11.79 lunch selections which included soup or salad and endless breadsticks (which are to die for and something I don't eat as a rule).
Saturday (Nov. 30) morning Steve and I started to go out for a walk around the campground and then decided to see if there were any geocaches nearby...there were, so off we went with the geocaching app on our phones.
We found 4 of the most interesting geocaches we have ever seen. They all required some sort of "test" to get into them.
This one required you to move the wand with the loop on it around the wire to the finish line. You could only touch the wire a maximum of 5 times. It took us both numerous tries as it was a bit finicky!
We found the next one but could not get it open...On the box you will find lots of screw heads sticking out. Two of these screw heads are part of an electric circuit which turn on lights to help you discover the combination of the lock. All you need to do is use the wire supplied with the container to connect the correct screw heads to complete the electric circuit and turn on the lights. Unfortunately no matter what combination of bolts Steve touched, nothing happened, so he gave up. Perhaps it had a dead battery...
The next cache was called 'Four Letter Word' and you had to enter in the correct 4-letter word and it gave you the correct combination to open the lock. Well...the hint was 'a Beatles song'. We had no problem opening it...
Well, that was fun! But we decided we had better head back home. We are meeting Dale and Ruth in the parking lot across the highway at Oro Valley Marketplace and going out for another hike/walk.
They picked us up at 12:30 and we headed to Vistoso Nature Preserve. In a nutshell, the property used to be the Vistoso Golf Course, opening in 1995, but closed in 2015 after the golf course operator defaulted on the mortgage. It was eventually donated to the Town of Oro Valley. It is now the Vistoso Nature Preserve that has 6.2 miles of paths that wind through the property providing great views of the Catalina and Tortolita Mountains. There are 2 loops...north and south...we chose to do the north loop.
Ruth has quite an obsession with Crest Saguaros...and we, too, think they are pretty cool, so they took us on a driving tour to see a few that they had found. This one has 2...can you find them? Okay...so there's no golf course here, so all the holes must be from birds...
I think this one is particularly interesting...
They dropped us off just before 3:30...another fun afternoon! We said "see ya later"...we are meeting them, along with Lee and Tracy for dinner. Lee and Tracy are more RV friends that we haven't seen in years but still managed to stay in touch via Facebook.
We all headed home to shower and get ready to meet for dinner at 6:00 at Fork and Fire Smokehouse and Taproom...which happened to be at the Oro Valley Marketplace. We had a wonderful time catching up with Lee and Tracy after so many years (8? 9?). Our table was rather boisterous with the 6 of us...a lot of laughing! A great time! Thank you Lee and Tracy for coming all of the way out to Oro Valley, especially after your travel day!
Thank you Ruth and Dale for all your hospitality while we have been in the area...and a big THANK YOU for treating me to my birthday dinner!
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