Show Low, AZ to Tucson, AZ
Scrub and more scrub. I’m not sure what the Rand McNally staff was thinking when they said the drive from Petrified Forest National Park to Show Low was a “scenic” one. There were some small towns along the way which were so run down I wondered whether anyone still lived there. I did notice that no matter how run down a town was, the local church was always immaculate as if they had been constructed yesterday.
Witnessing my first mini dust devil
To my dismay, I was unable to find a spot to camp in the National Forest around Show Low and around 9pm gave up and slept in the parking lot of a Holiday Express. It’s probably one of the hardest things to find parking in a small town since you can’t park in the neighborhoods because everyone knows the vehicles that belong and there are no Walmarts (which people suggest to me is the panacea of car living). Luckily, I have not had to resort to mega store parking lots yet. I’ll be posting something later concerning places to overnight park for free.
Figuring I didn’t want to make that mistake again, I left Show Low for Tucson and got to work figuring out what to do next at Bently’s Coffee and Tea. Once again, it appeared I would not be able to camp in the National Forest since the closest spots seemed 1.5 hours away. I couldn’t camp out in Tucson as the weather was topping the 90s. What to do?
I turned to Couchsurfing and immediately sent out requests to hosts. Yasmin was gracious enough to host me at the last minute. We went to dinner at Penca where I was introduced to Chiles en Nogada which is a specialty of the city of Puebla. The dish is made up of green poblano chiles stuffed with a picadillo and covered in a walnut crème sauce and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. The colors are supposed to represent the red, white, and green of the Mexican flag making the dish patriotic as well. Dinner was followed by a tour around downtown Tucson. Yasmin was a wonderful host and incredible to talk to. Hit her up if you end up in the Tucson area.
Thanks to Yasmin, I was able to visit Saguaro National Park with ease! Up next: The Arizona Circuit: Saguaro National Park (Part 4).
