La Mesa RV put in the new cooling unit in the RV on Tuesday and we spent the night in their parking lot to be sure that it worked. It cooled all night long so we let Tucson early Wednesday morning for San Diego. We saw lots of beautiful mountains and unusual rock formations along the way.

We stopped at a rest area in the Imperial Sand Dunes area. When you've seen one sand dune you have pretty much seen another.

The did reach for miles on both sides of the highway.

We were unable to get a site at Admiral Baker on the navy base so we went to the KOA in San Diego. It is a very attractive, well kept park.

We awoke on Thursday morning and made plans to go the San Diego Zoo.

There are two topiary elephants gracing the entrance.

Here is Wayne waiting for me by two metal sculptures. There are some nice sculptures throughout the park.

We rode the double-decker bus around for a tour before setting off on foot. These two tigers must be young as they were playing with a bag hanging from a tree and later we observed them chasing each other.

This bear looked as if he was posing for a picture.

I forget the name of this animal but he was cute. This may have been the spectacle bear.

This is just two of the adult giraffes with a new baby giraffe.

The Meerkats are so cute. The also look like they are posing for the crowd.

San Diego has two Giant Pandas on loan from China. This one is the mother of the other one who was sleeping like a lot of the animals in the park.

These were to pretty monkeys.

When we arrived at the Cheetah cage they were cleaning it. When the girl finished she put a cow femur on a ledge on the cage at the front of the cage. This is the cat coming to find her treat.

She made a leap up to get the bone.

Then she carried it off to her den.

This mountain lion seemed to be alerted by something outside the cage and came right up to the fencing. She then followed Wayne with her eyes as we walked by.

The landscaping of the grounds is beautiful. Each area is landscaped with plant native to the habitat of the animals. This was a particularly unusual cactus.

This Orangutan is know as the artist. I think he may be the one I have seen painting pictures. He is the leader of this group.

This is his latest offspring.

I think this is a beautiful monkey.

Here we have one of the tigers grooming him/herself.

Just in case I don't get to see one this summer in Alaska, I took this picture of a polar bear. The white stuff is sand not snow.

This was a very stately horned animal.

We took the Skyrail back from the polar bear exhibit to the front of the zoo.

I took this picture of a very interesting church from the skyrail.

We drove around Balboa park on the way back to the RV. We plan to see more of San Diego tomorrow.

Friday and Saturday in Tucson

Friday we didn't do much. However, my friend, Bobbie, worked in her beautiful garden and sent me pictures.

She agreed to let me include them in our blog.

She wanted everyone to know how beautiful the desert can be. And I agree

When I went over to extend our stay here at Davis-Monthan the host insisted that I go get a picture of their blooming cactus so I did.

Friday evening we enticed Ted away from grading papers for his high school classes to join us for dinner at outback. Notice Bobbie's beautiful jewelry in the picture of her and Ted. She makes beautiful jewelry that sells in galleries around here.

Saturday we got up and went to breakfast then headed to downtown Tucson. This is a beautiful old church that we saw on the way.

This is the old Town Hall.

This is a really interesting fountain in the courtyard next to the Town Hall. Wayne is walking over to a shady spot for us to rest.

This is the gate to the old Spanish Presidio. I insisted that I get in the picture as well. When I look at how fat I am I wish i hadn't.

This is me and a mural inside the Presidio.

We came back to the motorhome in time for Wayne to watch the 2009 NFL draft.

So much for now. Keep visiting.

Arizona Desert Museum

Well, we are still in Tucson. Our refrigerator quit working over the weekend so when we got in to La Mesa RV on Monday to have the black water flush replacement installed they changed out the thermostate and told us to go home and if it worked we were free to go and if not it probably was the cooling unit. Guess what? It didn't work so they have ordered a new cooling unit that will be in Thursday or Friday. In the mean time we threw away everything in the refrigerator except the wine and cheese and bought another ice chest so that we could buy some milk.

We also found out that the extended warrenty salesman never got our signed contract so we don't have an extended warrenty. Of course they charged the credit card last August but no policy was ever registered with the warrenty people. Thank goodness the refrigerator is covered by Norcold.

Since we were going to spend some extra days in Tucson we decided to go out to the Arizona Desert Museum. They have all kinds of cacti over the mile and a half walking trail.

They also have a variety of wild reptiles crawling around. Wayne found one for me to come see.

This little fellow was very friendly and both Wayne and I were able to get very close.

There were gardens for bees, moths, and butterflies. This is the butterfly garden and if you look closely you will see one in the upper left quarter of the picture.

This is also the area where the Segura cactus grow and as you can see they get very tall.

This is the sculpture outside the aviary. It shows the presumed evolution of our current birds.

Here are a few of the birds that we saw.

The had a separate aviary for humming birds. We were able to observe two hummers in their nests.

The mountain lion was getting out from the heat but he did look up and Wayne got a really good picture of him.

They also had several big horn sheep.

The Mexican wolf was also trying to stay cool under this tree.

These Mexican parrots were in an area all by themselves.

As we exited one of the indoor exhibits there was an area where you could dig through the mine dumpings to see if you could find anything of value.

Wayne also made friends with a squirrel.

One of the inside exhibits had reptiles in it.

As usual I took a lot more pictures so if you want to see more you can see them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/marynelle/DesertMuseum?feat=directlink.

Hopefully the next time I write we will be in California.