Quest for The Thing?

Well, our trip is coming to an end. We are on I25 as I type. Thomas is driving and I am summarizing our last day of letterboxing in Arizona. We should get home around midnight, no problemo, we can sleep in tomorrow - in our own home!

We left Phoenix around nine this morning and decided to head to Picacho Peak State Park. Three letterboxes and a couple of nice hikes - seemed like fun to me. Well we spent about three hours in the park and found Picacho Cactus, The Cercidium and Picacho Wildflowers. This was a great place to hike. Nice trails and beautiful views in all directions. The weather was fantastic, warm but not hot and incredible blue skies. And Saguaros everywhere! It was great - we got to see young Saguaros to larger multi-armed ones, as well as skeletons of Saguaros long gone. We also got to see a large variety of cacti. We encountered some that at a distance looked as though they were soft and fluffy - up close this was not the case! There were also those that had spines everywhere - it didn't seem that there would be a safe place to get near them. Others had these three to four inch spines - OUCH! But all of them were beautiful, if you haven't been to Picacho Peak State Park, what are you waiting for? Get out there! The letterboxes and hikes are worth it.

After we left the park we headed east on I10. We stopped just before Tucson in Marana at "The Thing" billboard and found Kristal and Ron's The Church of Logic, Sin and Love. The billboard intrigued us, but was it enough to get us to stop and see what "The Thing" is. You'll have to read on to find out if we found out. From here we drove to Tucson, stopped and had a little lunch and rested a bit before we got back on the road. Okay, so we drove the 93 miles to Dragoon. In all honesty we only stopped because AZroadie has a box near here (What is the Thing?). We found the box and I stamped in - NO, the stamp does not answer the question - it is the question. So did we stop and see "The Thing" --- we didn't, so the question for us remains unanswered.

By this time it was getting late so we headed out, remember our goal is to get to Santa Fe tonight. As we drove, there was an incredible sunset in our rear view mirror. I got a picture and I'll post it in the photo album when I get home (unfortunately, the picture doesn't do the sunset justice). It continued to get dark and we wanted to stop in Lordsburg, NM and grab one more letterbox. Well, it was completely dark by the time we got to the rest area. This did not dampen out letterboxing spirits. Out came the flashlight. So, I'm walking around with a flashlight and the clue for the box. There were only two other cars in the parking lot and I think we may have freaked out the people in those cars. We were walking around the pet area and then heading off into the darkness with these people just staring at us. I'm glad it was dark - they couldn't tell what we were doing. We found the box and I was glad - another great AZroadie stamp (we got seven of his boxes on this trip).

We should be home any minute so I'll end this post. Look for the photo album soon!