Vaca 2021, Day 6 - Saguaro (Sa-wa-ro) West, Barrio Brewing & Chillin'

Woke up at 6:18am this morning and it was already 88 degrees out of doors. Do the morning routine while dreaming about the first sip of morning coffee. Being the clever fella that I am, I hatched a plan to start brewing the coffee while I'm brushing my teeth and my stupid looking hair, so that once I finished brushing, I would be in my swim trunks, cup of coffee in hand and if that weren't enough to cement my status as genius,  I'd also be in the pool alone by 6:35am.

I executed the plan flawlessly (as newly dubbed geniuses do!) and was in the pool with one floaty-noodly thingy-ma-bob under my knees and the other under my neck, cup of coffee in hand.  

It was so lovely!  Even when I closed my eyes for extended periods of floating, I could tell exactly which direction my feet were pointing due to the sun cooking me.  It was so quiet out there save for some construction a couple of blocks away on a house.  But the birds were singing to me and me alone and they weren't singing the songs that I would hear back home.  Different songs. New songs. 

At one point, I was staring at the blue sky above me and thinking of looking out the window of a plane when we were flying to Hawaii and seeing the ocean below.  I was imagining the sky being the ocean below and completely lost in thought when a single engine craft flew through my line of vision and caused me some horrible confusion for a couple of good seconds!!  THAT's how relaxed and lost in a daydream I was.

I have come to the conclusion that EVERY day should start with a peaceful, private float in the water to clear ones head and reset before another day of "normal" begins.

Once I was out of the water, I went back up to the chairs by the house to drip dry in the sun and have another cup of coffee (I'll clean up the water drips later!).

Once the boys got up and started moving about, we piled back into the vessel to head of to Saguaro Ntl Park West for a beautiful drive thru that section of the park.  

 

No cactus in this one, but we're entering the park outside of Tucson.

The very large visitor center.  They had a lot of stuff here that was closed for Covid, but I bet this would be a pretty cool visit in "more normaler" times.

I loved seeing the variety of cacti.  Roadrunner and Coyote only provided a view of very specific cacti!  They skewed my reality!

Taken off the back patio of the visitor center.

Same...

More cool variety of the pointy plant!  I love how the shadow of the plant alters the bottom half of this picture.

The remainder of the drive back into Tucson was gorgeous and sometimes stunning in it's views.  

I absolutely LOVE pictures like this when you can find a road or railroad track winding thru scenery like this!

 

It was after lunch time when we got into Tucson proper, everyone was hungry, so we headed to Barrio Brewing Co. for some lunch.  This place is located in an old industrial area being repurposed for more modern fare.  The food was excellent and the beer didn't suck either!

We went back to the Albertsons grocery as it's between Barrio and our "house".  We have some driving to do tomorrow so we got sammy's for everyone so we could eat on the road and eliminate delays.

Back at the house for the night.  Kids are happily in the pool enjoying our light day of driving and more just hanging out.

Tucson at dusk.  I wasn't sure what that bright light was, but turns out it was a plane coming in with landing gear down.

We spend a lot of time in the pool and it was also a great opportunity to start sorting the beer that I had purchased into the 'Ted' pile, the 'for this guy' pile and the 'for trade' piles.  We also got a ton of laundry done and repacked things.

This was one of my favorite days so far as we had a lot of time to chill and just spend time together with not much planned.  

There's also something about starting a day floating in a pool with no distractions, no expectations and some extreme quiet!

Just sayin'.