Sunday, February 8, 2015

Tubac Art Festival

Yesterday was a beautiful day to mosey around the Tubac Art Festival. It got up to 80 degrees with just brilliant sunshine (oh it's great to live where it's warm in the winter). Tubac is a small tourist town about 60 miles south of Tucson where they close off the whole town to set up approx. 100 booths for people to display their creative wears. It's always fun to walk around and see how creative people can be, there are always many unusual creations. They even have a free shuttle to get around.
Jim admiring some metal art work. 
After spending about 2 1/2 hours seeing all the wonderful art works, Jim is in line to get a big bag of Kettle Corn to take home.
 One happy camper!
 On our way home, we stopped at the Silver Saddle Steak House where Jim has always wanted to try since they opened back in 1980, but was never on that side of town (south by I10) close to dinnertime. We were quite surprised when we drove up at 4:45pm that the parking lot was already full and there was a waiting list. (Being open for 35 years - it must be good)
After a beer at the bar, we finally was seated after a 20 minute wait. Jim ordered a Mesquite Open Pit Steak.
 Here's the open pit where they do all the grilling.
 Jim's steak came out great, you really can't see it in this picture, but the grill marks are perfect.
 I had to taste their famous prime rib and it came out great also - not too fatty. Of course the meals came with cowboy beans.

The food was fabulous and we would definitely return whenever we are on that side of town again. When we left, the place was just packed with people waiting out the door. I'm glad we went early. We headed home to enjoy our dessert - Kettle Corn!

Monday, February 2, 2015

Day Trip Diversion

What do you do on a Saturday that the weather forecast predicts rain for the full day? Well, you go wine tasting of course! So that's what we proceeded to do, leaving the house at 10am heading for Willcox (about 90 miles east on I10). This area we have not experienced before, so thought it would be a good day to sample the wines of that area. As we are heading down Houghton Rd, almost to I10, I hit something in the road (most likely a pot hole) that neither Jim nor I saw and a little ways further I got the notice of low tire pressure - so happen there was a convenient spot to pull over right away. Of course the back tire was flat.
 So Jim had the pleasure of changing the tire to the spare. We took the flat tire to Discount Tires just back up the road about a mile (luckily didn't need to go far). Something had put a hole in the inside tire wall and also did a little damage to the rim. So, since we needed to replace the tire, we decided it was best just to replace all the tires, but that store did not have them in stock and it would take them over 2 hours to get them. So we drove back home and parked the Lincoln in the garage - but not to deter us from our fun, rainy day, we just jumped in Jim's truck and took off back down the road to our original destination, only 2 hours later.

We made it to Willcox without further incidents (Jim was better at missing all the pot holes than I was). Our first stop was at Coronado Winery where we were the only wine tasters, so we essentially had a private wine tasting. We also enjoyed a beautiful cheese/fruit/chocolate plate. It was a great first stop and their wines were surprisingly good as we proceeded on purchasing 6 bottles.
 Next we headed downtown Willcox to catch 4 different tasting rooms. And when I say "downtown" I'm talking that if you blink you will miss it. But it's a cute little area, nothing really there worth visiting except the wine tasting. We ended up purchasing a couple more bottles, but nothing spectacular. With all the rain, the roads to the outlying wineries were not passible (we were informed that you would need 4 wheel drive to get through), so after finishing the tasting room visits, we headed back to Tucson to finish the day with dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse to celebrate Jim's birthday which was yesterday (2/1). All in all it was an enjoyable, rainy day even with the little diversion.

Now this morning (Monday) I'm heading to the tire store to get new tires on the Lincoln. Hopefully the rim isn't damaged too much that I either need to get it replaced or repaired. We'll see in another 1/2 hour.