Our Trip to the land of ONE grocery store

So, as my previous post revealed, we went to Tucson over the weekend for Mike's first UTA (military jargon for drill weekend). We left here Friday night at 9:30 figuring Gavin will sleep the whole 2 hour drive since it's late, dark and he had already been in bed for 2 hours. That plus Mike forgot he needed clothes and had to do laundry. So we leave, and Gavin is WIDE AWAKE the whole ride down there. Talking and dancing to music. Very cute but when he didn't go back to sleep during the ride down, I knew I was in for it. So we get to Tucson at about 11:30 and finally get to the hotel about midnight.

We stayed at the "lovely" Airport Hampton Inn. And I use the word lovely VERY VERY lightly. It doesn't look bad from outside as this picture shows.

it's behind Gavin in this one

We get the keys to the room and drive around back, to park since the room was on the 3rd floor in the rear of the hotel. We get all the stuff in the hotel and when we get into the elevator me and Mike look at eachother and gulp. The door was missing paint, and all dented. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but the camera was in the diaper bag and I forgot afterwards. Then the elevator starts to move. I swear I felt like I was on that thrill ride the Tower of Terror going up this thing. It was rocking back and forth and you could feel it bumping into the walls on the way up. Then it started making this odd grinding noise. I held on to Gavin with both arms so tight he pushed me off and said "mommy" in this real frustrated get off me tone, that I had to laugh. We thank our lucky stars when the door opens and it's actually at the floor not stopped half way between levels or anything crazy.

We get off real quick and go to our room, which lucky us is next to housekeeping's storage rooms. They had a pack-n-play in the room which I don't think I would use as a laundry basket it was so nasty. There was white stains all over it and what looked like soda spills on the plastic. I was thankful that we brought ours, I was afraid to fold up the hotel one and put it away for fear of getting contaminated. The funny part was who ever labeled them spelled the hotel name wrong. It said HAPTON all over it. Whoever did that must have skipped ESL.

And boy was I right about Gavin. He did not go to sleep until 4:30 that morning. And Mike had to get up and leave at 5:30 to be at the base at 6:00. Oh and I must also mention it's not at Davis Monthan, the some what normal base, it's at the airport. Where the Air National Guard station is. So the base is like literally 6 square blocks. Which I guess is fine for 1 weekend a month. So needless to say I don't get any sleep Friday night. Not to mention that I drove there (and back).

Gavin is finally asleep at 4:30 so Mike takes the Trailblazer to the base for inprocessing. Gavin gets up at 9:30 and we go downstairs for breakfast, no restaurant, just continental breakfast. Which is fine cause they had eggs oatmeal, cereal, bunch of bagels and donuts and juices. So we get food for me and him and go back to the room. This is Gavin eating breatfast in bed.



Gavin liked breakfast so that made me happy. The eggs had ham and cheese in them, and he had a biscut and oatmeal and apple juice. So he was good to go. Since Mike had the transportation we hung out in the room and played with the toys we brought until he got all types of cranky and needed a nap. I put him in his pack-n-play about noon and he ran around and rocked it back and forth until about 1:30 the passed out. Mike got back at about 2:20 and we ordered pizza since Gavin was sleeping finally. They delivered right to our room, which was nice. We ate and decided to go to "Arizona Factory Outlets" which the hotel book said was a good "shopping spot". Apparently whoever wrote that was in the same class with the person who labeled the port-a-cribs.

We drive around for 20 minutes trying to find this great place that's 3 miles away from the hotel. Finally go back to the hotel and Mike uses the computer in the lobby to Google it. And we find out it's on a road off the main road which wasn't even mentioned in the directions in the book. So we finally find it an hour after setting out to go there. It was off this road behind a run down building that looked like it used to be a warehouse. We pull into the parking lot and the building is reminiscent of the indoor swap mart. We get out the stroller and go in. The second the door opens I almost fall over from the smell. Imagine your in a bathroom that hasn't been cleaned in about a month and the toilets don't flush. That's the smell. Only add wet carpet smell to it. And there are 3 stores.


A Dollar Plus (nothing was $1, so they really meant the plus part) a Toy Liquidators, which had toys from the early to mid 90's for sale (pogs- remember them?) and you can almost see it in the picture a Vanity Fair. We did manage to spend $50 at Vanity Fair on like 4 outfits for Gavin and a $5 shirt for Mike. But we got out of there so fast, it was horrible.

We stopped at a QT for directions to Walmart (hoping they had one) and a good place too eat (again hoping they had one) and we were directed to Golden Corral, a buffet. Surprisingly it was very good. They had cook to order steak and popcorn shrimp. The 3 of us ate there for like $25. They had quite a few things to choose from and unlike Country Buffet we didn't get sick! And Walmart was right accross the street. Mike ran in and picked up a few things and when he came out he said he was the only white person in there and he felt very out of place. I cracked up. After our fun little outing we went back to the hotel to try and put Gavin to bed. He finally fell asleep at 9:30 Saturday night, so did we since I was exhausted from the night before.

Sunday I got my ID, Mike finished inprocessing and I had to pack up the room and check out by 2pm. So not much happened Sunday. After Mike was done we did go to Davis Monthan to check it out. Very small compared to Luke but you could fit a good 3 or 4 of the ANG bases on it. They are big on security compared to Luke too. They wanted to see everyone's ID and the had those tire spike strips in the ground so you couldn't go the wrong way. We got gas ($2.57 a gallon) and headed back towards home. Again with me driving, only this time it's 3:30 in the afternoon. Gavin and Mike both sleep almost the whole way back. Gavin needed it. We got home about 5:00 Sunday and boy was I glad to get home.

I DO NOT WANT TO MOVE DOWN THAT WAY!!!! Mike wanted to move out that way everyone from the base told him not to cause there is nothing out there. Boy were they right. They have 1 Food City and 1 Walmart. I think I saw 3 pharmacies and about 6 gas stations the rest is run down trailer parks, and abandoned warehouses and buildings. There was 1 area that had new houses going up, from the $130's which is shocking to see but that's cause there is nothing there and you have to drive 30+ minutes to get to anything. The closest mall, real mall, we found out is 30 minutes away. I would not be able to live in an area like that. The only nice thing was how close the mountains are to you compared to here.