My Tucson
Monday, October 16th, 2023: 2023 Trips, Road Trips.
The Hotel
I had to make a sudden, unplanned three-hour drive to Tucson for a medical exam. It took me a while to get ready, so I decided to stay overnight and hit the medical center the next morning.
Tucson is one of my long-time waystations. Its low-rise sprawl spans the huge basin below the 9,000 foot Santa Catalina mountains. I’ve visited most parts of that sprawl, from the airport in the far south (my favorite in the U.S.), to a friend’s house on Sabino Creek in the far east, to REI and Whole Foods in the far northwest, to the Sonoran Desert Museum (actually a zoo) just west of the city. My first-ever visit, more than 20 years ago, was downtown, to hipster hangout Hotel Congress. I stayed there twice, danced at the nightclub, and ate at the cafe dozens of times, beginning in 2006, as I commuted from New Mexico to San Diego on my longest-lasting tech industry contract.
So I know the city pretty well and have a few favorite places. One of those is the Reid Park DoubleTree hotel. I stayed there first in 2008, fifteen years ago. Reid Park, about four miles east of downtown, is dominated by a golf course, and the hotel is an affordable midscale resort and conference center. Many people say it’s in the middle of nowhere, but I routinely shop in that area, and there’s a wide variety of restaurants nearby. Like every Western city, Tucson has the full spectrum from cheap motels to trendy boutique hotels and luxury resorts. I’ve tried all extremes, but prefer the comfortable, unpretentious DoubleTree.
I last stayed there in 2018, and the place seems to be struggling in the wake of COVID. Their low occupancy rates can no longer sustain a restaurant – they serve breakfast, and a lobby bar features a limited food menu. But the staff is still friendly, the grounds are still clean, and the rooms are still being regularly renovated. I’ve stayed in the tower before, with a great view of the mountains, but this time I got a cheaper courtyard room – with a private patio shaded by orange trees. At the lobby bar, I enjoyed my favorite local IPA and one of the best burgers of my life.
The Hospital
This was a bizarre, disorienting trip in which I drove three hours to check into a big-city hospital Emergency Department for tests I couldn’t get at home, tests which would otherwise require months of waiting for an appointment. After last year’s nightmare illness, I dreaded being inside a hospital again, and was half hoping they’d turn me away.
But the staff accepted my situation and went right to work. I saw one doctor after another, and the second said they would keep me overnight – something I was ready for but not happy about. Then I waited four hours for an MRI, had a complete neurological exam, and was discharged – they’d found nothing wrong – after a total of eight hours in the maze-like bowels of the hospital.
I booked another night in another DoubleTree courtyard room, enjoyed a salad in the bar, and early to bed.
The Eclipse
Wanting to at least do something fun in the city before heading home, I found the nearby U of A was hosting an eclipse event. Visitors were advised to park in the Cherry Street garage, which I found on Google Maps. I drove through campus on Cherry Street, less than ten minutes before the maximum, but the garage didn’t seem to exist, a big crowd was swarming over the parklike intersection, and there was no street parking.
At the same time, my Native American friend was urgently trying to reach me, and I couldn’t keep dismissing his calls. So I drove off campus and found a shaded spot in front of a house where two women were putting up Halloween decorations. Before calling, I turned my notebook into an eclipse viewer, punching a hole in a page with my ballpoint pen, held it out my car window, and saw the crescent – Tucson was getting the 80% version.
The Museum
After the call, it was almost time for the art museum to open. I’m a fan of regional art museums. In keeping with Latin culture, Tucson’s modest museum is built as an inward-facing courtyard, blank on the outside, incorporating historic adobe buildings along one side. Their permanent collection is poor, so temporary exhibitions are the draw. A sort of smaller, inverted, rectilinear Guggenheim, the building starts at street level and spirals underground.
I spent two hours there, longer than ever before, ending on the easily-overlooked upper floor, which hides, like an afterthought, a disappointing selection of modern art. There I found an Alexander Calder print featuring a spiral. He’d made a belt buckle with a silver version of that same spiral, and in high school, as a friend of the family, I made a belt for it.
Finding my way out, I hoped to eat at the busy cafe. But I was starving and it was all light fare.
The Restaurant
A few blocks up the street is a Mexican dinner house I’d tried before. When I travel from my small town to the big city, I have no interest in sushi, Thai, or any of the other exotic cuisines city people favor. Mexican food at home is so limited, all I’m interested in is better Mexican food.
The hostess put me in the far corner at the window, which was fine with me. But right next to me was an enclosed stone staircase leading to a dark cellar, and my waiter, a young gay man with bleached hair, said if the goblin bothered me, I should just toss it some chips.
