Tucson, AZ — We’re back in Tucson with Heather’s mom for another active adult community “play and stay” deal. This time we’re staying in Green Valley about 25 minutes south of Tucson. Since the season is over, we didn’t bring our bikes, but they did have three mountain bikes in the garage of the model home we were staying in. Heather was religious and rode every day. I rode once, but couldn’t stand riding a bike without clipless pedals, so I ended up going to the fitness center and running instead. Oh, and I did do some driving around in the golf cart they supplied with the guest home.

We looked at all the model homes and checked out the surroundings. We also stopped by the Green Valley Pecan Company store. This area is great for growing Pecans and has the largest orchard in the continental United States. Pecan trees are fairly tall and the orchards are irrigated so even though it could be 90° in the desert, the temperature in the orchard is like 73°! I bought some pecans to take to our upcoming trip to New York so my mom could make a pecan pie. They had an interesting CD with a video on how they harvest and package the pecans. To get the pecans off the tree they have these huge machines that have giant padded claws that grasp one of the main branches coming off of the trunk and just shake the tree! The pecans fall, then another machine plows them into linear piles and yet a third machine will come and pick them up. Quite the process!

Tucson is really pretty this time of year and gardens in some of these manicured communities are brightly filled with all sorts of colors. At one house we were looking at there was a multi-colored butterfly hanging out on some really bright flowers. Just to the south is an observatory so there is a lighting ordinance which says that there can’t be any light that shines out or up. This makes it great for seeing the stars at night. You could see the Milky Way when you go out at night.