{"id":1571,"date":"2009-12-27T17:51:07","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T01:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2009-12-27T19:01:57","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T03:01:57","slug":"christmas-day-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=1571","title":{"rendered":"christmas day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our first full day in Tucson started off with “free” breakfast in the hotel restaurant.\u00a0 High school cafeteria pancakes (or scrambled eggs) were served up with little sausages and a drink.\u00a0 The hotel wasn’t properly staffed for a full house, with only one cook and two waitresses waiting for a whole hungry hotel of guests.\u00a0 It took 45 minutes to get my “free” (it’s built into the cost of your room, “free” is a marketing gimmick) McDonald’s imitation pancakes and sausage and the most watered down orange juice I’ve ever had.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The whole problem could have been averted by turning the situation into a buffet line (they had space behind the counter to rig it), but I’m sure some cost cutting executive noted that folks would “take advantage” of that.\u00a0 Trust me, three tasteless pancakes are right about my limit.<\/p>\n

Our plans had to change as the Air Force base is closed on Sundays.\u00a0 We decided to swap our plans for today with Monday’s.\u00a0 Our first stop was the Sonora Desert Museum.\u00a0 Not much was happening as we were “out of season” to see any plants in bloom or most animals running around.\u00a0 Most of the critters we saw were hibernating.\u00a0 We didn’t spot a single lizard the entire time (lie! we saw one clinging to the top of the netting above the hummingbird room).<\/p>\n

We did see a herd of Javalina’s (what? – a pig with black hair).<\/p>\n

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Because of the scarcity of anything with color (other than beige) I found this part of the day kind of a let-down.\u00a0 The desert museum takes about two and a half hours to walk all the way through – but I wouldn’t recommend it in winter.<\/p>\n

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We decided to stop at Old Town Tucson for lunch, but when we discovered the admission was $17 (more than the museum, by the way), we collectively said “F – that!” and got back on the road.\u00a0 We changed our original plans of going to El Charro for dinner and upped it to lunch.\u00a0 Of course the portions were so big we ended up not even eating dinner anyway.<\/p>\n

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After eating we headed back out Speedway to Gates’ Pass to watch the sunset.\u00a0 I convinced my parents to hike up the rocks on the smaller hill.<\/p>\n

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For the sunset we came back down and started up the mountain on the other side of the parking lot.\u00a0 My parents wandered half the way up and decided to call it a day.\u00a0 I kept going and watched the sun go down from a high cliff, alone in the quiet of the vast valley below my feet (or, below the rock below my feet).<\/p>\n

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Our first full day in Tucson started off with “free” breakfast in the hotel restaurant.\u00a0 High school cafeteria pancakes (or scrambled eggs) were served up with little sausages and a drink.\u00a0 The hotel wasn’t properly staffed for a full house, with only one cook and two waitresses waiting for a whole hungry hotel of guests.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1574,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions\/1574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}