Tucson

As silly as it may sound, we are running out of places to visit in and around the United States! New Mexico was one of the few states that we had not visited together so we put together a fun roadtrip to see that part of the country and still hit some favorite areas, too.

We flew out Friday morning after Thanksgiving and the airports were not even zoos. Amazing. We took an Uber to the Indy airport since it is cheaper and easier than parking these days and buzzed through TSA pre-check to hop our flights. We connected through Denver and about two movies later (The Big Sick- actually really good and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk which was a bit lame) we were in the desert! 

We grabbed our single checked bag (for the two of us for 9 days!!) and headed for town. The sun goes down so early in the winter so we had to get moving to see anything in the daylight. We went to the a highly rated food place in town to try tamales. Tucson Tamales is #5 of 1,557 restaurants in Tucson on TripAdvisor! Jackson, who had eaten tamales before, loved them. I had never had them before and hated them. It was a texture thing for me. I'm good if I never see another tamale in my life. 

We took ourselves on a tour of the University of Arizona's campus. It was LOVELY! 

Art at the UA entrance

Campus

Cactus

I loved this old building in the middle of campus

Again, it was the day after Thanksgiving so classes were not in session but campus was FULL of families playing on the lawns, people getting Christmas card photos taken, folks running and biking, you name it. The campus was just well-used and that is awesome. You always hope as a campus to have the community feel it is an additional place to utilize and clearly UA does that well!

Watching sunset

Not a bad view!

Petefish.

That evening I was determined that Tucson's food scene had to redeem itself in my eyes so we went to Guadalajara Grill. My life will never be the same. Hands down the best Mexican food EVER. We did learn, however, that our idea of spicy food and theirs differ. We had to have the salsa maker come back to our table and add tomatoes so we could eat the salsa we asked her to make. It turns out medium means on fire down here. HA! We ate so much because the food was just SO good. I would honestly fly back to Tucson just to eat there again.

Table-side salsa!!!!

Mini chimichangas and fajitas
YUM!!!!

After that massive meal we headed back to the hotel for the evening to relax, digest and go to sleep at like 9 p.m. local time since the time zones were catching up to us!