Author: NLAdmin

Drove to Tucson AZ to see our new house for the first time since we closed. Had to stock the place from scratch, fix stuff, replace stuff.

First time for us ever being in AZ this late in the year.  The good news is, 90F doesn’t feel that bad, esp if you’re out of the sun.  The bad news is, it got up to 99 half the time, and it’s really hard to get out of the sun.  The only way to enjoy the day is to get up real early.

Pics from this trip here.

Down for three weeks.  Stayed at a swank Airbnb in NE Tucson, near the Oro Valley line.  This place was formerly a Mediterranean mansion that was split up into the main house (still very large) and three casitas. Ours was the baby of the three.  We strolled the neighborhood, it was rural’ish, lots of houses on huge lots, lots of horse properties.

The east facing view put the Catalina mountains in our face. And if we raced over to the west side, we could watch the sun set.

Madeline and Sam came down for a week.

Airbnb photos here.

We rotated religiously between hiking, biking The Loop, and playing pickleball.

Ventana Canyon hike here.

Sabino Canyon hike here.

Pickleball shot here.

Spent a fair amount of time thinking about buying a place down this way.  This morphed into spending a fair amount of time, shopping with a realtor. Our target changed along the way from a small 2BR condo all the way to a 3BR full house with garage.  Go figure. The market was smoking hot, like everywhere else in America. We put a cash offer in one one place, didn’t bid enough lost it.  We lost too many showings to count, stuff was flying off the rack in a day.  We finally bid over (cash bid) on this place, got it.  These pics were pulled straight off the realtor site

2540 Tom Watson Dr.

We stayed at a swank “cabin”, compliments of old friends of Bill and Jan. A gorgeous home on a beautiful lake in Oneida County.

Biking, boating, swimming, pickleball, fine dining, with Bill and Jan S. Not necessarily in that order.

Outstanding fall color, decent weather, suitable for a couple of great country bike rides on low traffic roads.

The most unusual feature was a 99% full sized pickleball court, painted on the driveway.  Court areas outside the lines were unusual, colorful, and at times in short supply.  A hinder of “garage door” was invoked on multiple occasions.

Photos and videos can be seen below.  Links should bring you to a “lightbox” view of all the photos in a gallery. Clicking on any thumbnail gets you a larger single view.  You can then arrow left and right, or use the on-screen arrows to go left and right.

Hit <esc> to go back to the lightbox view at any time.  Close the tab when you’re done viewing, and you’re back to this page.

Photos here.

Pickleball instructional videos (3) follow.                                                                           – Lead Bloviator, lead videographer, head pro, key grip, and personal assistant to Eileen – Tim                                                                                                             – Assistant pro, able ball feeder, and personal assistant to Jan – Bill                    – Jan – Student #1                                                                                                                         – Eileen – Student #2

Videos here.