Even more from Tucson…

It’s now March ’23 in blog time and I was still in Tucson. And on March 2nd, I woke up in the morning to…

It wasn’t much snow as you can see but it was a surprise this far south. I’d had to disconnect the hose and drain it because the temp dipped into the 20’s F. Kinda of a surprise. It didn’t last long though. The cold I mean.

I received the special medicine the VA had approved later in March and the entire system is brimming with parts.

The eye meds come in a large box which has 2 smaller boxes of accessories then another heavily insulated box with a pound or two of dry ice in which there are two foam boxes that contained a weeks worth of eye drops each. The other two boxes carried alcohol pads, the adapter that fit on top of each bottle as needed, and the syringe that I’d suck up the medicine and drip into my eye. I was to do that every 2 hours without fail. I’d start at 10 AM, then repeat at 12 PM, 2 PM, 4 PM, 6 PM and finally 8 PM. There’s some wiggle room in that and they insisted that if I didn’t finish the treatment within 12 hours of starting it, to toss the bottle of med. I don’t have much experience with syringes so the first week I’d just get a tiny bit of juice into my eye…wasn’t until the 2nd week I noticed that if I flicked the syringe the air bubble like you see on medical dramas would travel to the top and I’d get a full syringe worth of med instead of the few drips I’d been getting.

So that’s what I did everyday for 2 solid months. And every two weeks I’d have to call in and repeat everything I’d told them originally then they’d overnight ship another 2 weeks worth.

I did use my insulated pouch to carry some ice and the med with me when I had to shop or something so I wasn’t tied to home base.

John and I did get into a routine where we’d try to find another brew pub to go to every Thursday afternoon. That was always fun. And I did some sight seeing on my own, like one day I headed over to the Tucson Zoo. That’s right, Tucson has a zoo. I pulled in the wrong driveway and ended up in a little used parking lot for the ordinary park right next to the zoo. Only had to walk a few feet instead of 100’s of feet from the zoo’s regular parking lot. Pretty happy about that what with my knees.

I got to the ticket kiosk and the gal asked about insulated pouch I carried, told her it had my eye med and asked if she wanted to see? She didn’t and waved me though.

And here’s just inside after paying for my ticket. It was in the 70’s on this particular morning around 10 AM. It was also the last day of the month of March. March 31st to be exact.

Just around behind the ticket booth area is a flamingo pond. They weren’t moving very fast. I wonder how they keep them here in Tucson.

This is where the flamingos live at night I guess. Right next to the pond.

Some kind of animal in there, I forget now. Monkeys of some kind. Note that it was hard to get good pictures because the sun was so bright and my camera isn’t the best.

And the meerkat habitat. Hard to spot them initially.

I show several pictures above that don’t have much to show as far as wildlife goes and that was my experience…too bright to see much and those areas where there was shade for the animals, the difference in contrast still made it difficult to see them. Photos didn’t pick up much due to that. Of course the animals tried to hid from the sun so they’d seek shade which makes them difficult to photograph.

And here’s the rhino paddock where I could NOT spy any rhinos. (Keep in mind my eye problems at the time). So I was standing there at the railing and a couple of folks were standing there with me looking out in the distance and the guy says, “I wonder where they are”. And I pipe up with, “Oh, I’ll bet these are the kind of rhinos that paint their toenails red and hide in the strawberry patch”. Got a chuckle or two from them.

And then I drifted over a short distance to where I could see behind the tree that was in the way…and lookie here. A rhino with red painted toenails. Huh.

You can see where it’s in a dirt pit, it’s the color of dirt, and it’s sorta behind that tree. No wonder I couldn’t see it.

And then a bit further on was this hefelump scratching the dirt wall. They had a sign the said this is a common behavior as they are hunting for minerals in the dirt.

Couldn’t get very close to them. They’re probably tired of humans anyway. But this pond was interesting. Too bad none of the hefelumps wanted a bath that day. You can see from my picture how close you can get to a bathing animal.

I was surprised that I was already half way round the zoo property. Not very big at all. Here and there are these large insect models. Good to scare kids with I guess. Local fauna types.

And I could hear this bear shuffling around, wasn’t sure if it would come out and say hi or not.

And of course they have a bird aviary.

And a monkey of some kind.

On the outdoor walking loop are buildings here and there, this one had reptiles.

And then back out. Around this time I heard a HUGE lion roar. Wow, I could tell it was maybe 200 feet away but boy was it loud. I had my fingers crossed that it hadn’t escaped. When I got to the lion enclosure, wasn’t a single lion out sunbathing. Seemed like they all wanted to be inside. Wasn’t all that hot either. They’d all headed inside after that roar I guess. Feeding time maybe?

Meanwhile, there were many birds like this one below that had their own cages. Little mini habitats.

And then these hamsters or whatever they are. Scrambling around their enclosure, reading law books about illegal incarceration.

Meanwhile, their neighbor waiting for one of them to make a mistake.  

That rhino finally got up. Still, a bit far away, couldn’t get a good shot.

And here’s an ape enjoying the day, leaning up against a tree in the shade.

And here near the exit was this map. Sun was in the right place to take a picture. I did go into the cafe but wasn’t thirsty and I had plans for lunch. Hung around for a few minutes resting my knees and then headed to BK nearby as I had a $20 gift certificate.

Once I got to BK I ordered 2 BK Whoppers Jr., a milk shake, fries, and an order of their just introduced to the menu spicy hot chicken fingers. And it all came to $16. WTF? So I ate half of everything and took the rest home for dinner the next day. Wow, $16 is expensive for just one meal for many people and many could down what I’d gotten in one go. Guess the days of fast and cheap are totally over.

So that was the end of March as it was March 31st when I went to the zoo. The weather had improved quite a bit from the dusting of snow we’d gotten on March 3rd as shown above and I’m not complaining. Balmy weather. That’s why Tucson is a great wintering place for us RV’ers.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I’ll see ya all in a few…