Tucson, AZ

The Reid Park Zoo has been a Tucson staple for as long as I can remember. Located on 22nd Street, just west of Alvernon off Randolph Way, it is a place that evokes pleasant childhood memories for those of us who can remember field trips from our youth. I can still remember spending the day at the zoo – the polar bears were and still are my favorite—then going across the street and having a picnic, while feeding the ducks at the pond.

Opa! We attended our local Greek Festival again this year at the end of September. St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church hosts the event over the course of four days and there is terrific food, great music, and interesting cultural dancing. The delicious aroma of the food cooking over open fire greets you long before the food stands come into view. If you weren’t hungry before you got there, one whiff and you will soon be starving. The cost is $3 for admittance (kids are free) and then the food ranges in price from $5 to $9 depending on the meal you order.

When a friend brought up going to a corn maze, I was startled to realize it was one of those things that I’ve heard talked about a lot, but had never actually been to myself. It just seemed like something I could swear I’ve been to before, you know, that time we went out to…and, I really had nothing. Luckily, Buckelew Farm has exactly that. So I was definitely all for it, and off we were for that quintessential activity I’d missed out on!

Our family has the majority of our produce delivered on a bi-weekly basis from a local organic farming company. It is a delivery our children look forward to, as the produce that gets delivered is different every week. Since our three-year-old daughter has shown a recent interest in learning about where our fruits and vegetables come from we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to take her and our son to a nearby orchard and farm.

This past week my husband and I took our children to the La Encantada shopping center, located on Skyline just west of Campbell on the North side of the street, simply to enjoy some time outdoors with the weather being gorgeous. Both kids gravitated toward the many fountains throughout the outside portion of the “mall.” They found joy and pleasure in the simplest of things: water dripping from an old rusty pipe, the lilly pads floating in one of the water displays. They spent twenty minutes just throwing pennies in one fountain. Amidst all these shops and restaurants is an entire park with beautiful flowers, green foliage, running water, and stone tortoises, which the children took pure delight in climbing on.

Since the inaugural event in February, the Sculpture Resource Center’s First Thursday Art Event has become a regular on my schedule of things to do in Tucson. As the name implies, the First Thursday Art Event truly has something for everyone, from a craft table where the little artists can have a crack at drawing and painting while the senior artists can simply kick back and enjoy great entertainment.

I have to say, it was just a series of little pink signs with clever rhymes, but seeing them day by day up and down Campbell Ave definitely did a good job of intriguing me. I’d long seen bats flitting around at twilight in my neighborhood, and had wondered where it was they might sleep during the day. I definitely hadn’t been able to imagine any caves within the city, and I didn’t think they’d fly so far as to come from open desert…but under any of the bridges crossing the Rillito River? There was only one way to find out, and that was to attend Bat Night!

The nights are getting cool in the Old Pueblo and as a result, I can be more easily coaxed out of my house even before sunset these days. I heard that merchants and artists would be participating in a free event on 4th Avenue from on a Saturday evening from 4:00-9:00 p.m., an event called Rendezvous on the Avenue, and it would be featuring live music, vendors, and a fashion show. To start things off, I met my friend Carol around 6:00 p.m. for a yummy slice of Magpies pizza. Since the Avenue was full of hustle and bustle and parking was at a premium, I parked in the lot nearly Brooklyn Pizza. The weather was nice enough to enjoy the sunset and live music on the patio outside Magpies. We snacked on our slices and listened to the band, Nobody Et. Al., play as tables filled with couples and families ate their dinner and indulged in a little dancing

The first thing that actually attracted me to the Native Foods Demonstration at Bookman’s was the chance to learn some local history – to maybe learn it in a hands-on way, or even a tastebuds-on way, was an added bonus. But then it occurred to me – at food demonstration, there might be free food! And at that, I was completely sold.
And as it turned out, plenty of free food there was – Celebrando el Pueblo de Tucson offered a great mix of history, hand-on, and food in the fun and laid-back Bookman’s setting.

We’ve been having a pretty mild summer in Tucson, but it’s still something hot, of course. When there was a dearth of rain for a few days in the middle of the monsoon, that didn’t stop us from still finding a way to cool off, though, and we even got to play in the mud at Mud Monster, mud puddle party in Reid Park!