She-She Groceries

There's upscale and then there's UPSCALE, as in mostly unaffordable.  Who would have thought groceries could be so expensive?

It was time for the three Musketeers to head uptown, and by that I mean it's about a 40 minute drive, to the Food In Root Farmers Market.  I wanted to stock up on their red chili tamales.  The first stop was the Chance Ranch where Miss Missy was posing for her money shot.  This baby should be on the cover of Kitty Food Magazine, she's so beautiful ... and fluffy!!

Miss Snoopy the flying cat should be right next to her.  She is well named, as one of her favorite games is to pull open drawers and hide inside, not to mention jumping up above the kitchen cupboards and looking down on her prey ... US.  

Next stop was Pat's house.  There's nothing like three women getting together to get in trouble.  Pat is the one who took me to the embroidery workshop.  This girl has a sewing room to die for!!  Look at all that beautiful fabric so well displayed.   She makes me want to organize everything!!

And we're OFF!!  I'm not really sure how we got there, I was just following Pat's directions.  This is the Food In Root Farmers Market in North Tucson.  They have more crafts than vegetables, but there ARE several food stands that will give you tastes of their products.  I tasted everything!!  

This beauty snatched up everything that hit the ground from the taste testing.  He's just a baby with lots of Bull Mastiff in his bloodlines, but as calm as could be.  Most puppies would be dancing the Macarena, but this baby just laid down in the sun.    In the meantime I tasted the macaroons.  I'm not sure why because I hate coconut.  No, that was NOT one of the things baby found on the ground.  I choked it all down.  Actually it was pretty good for coconut!!

Dogs are BIG in Tucson and everywhere you go, most are very well behaved.   When the puppy was jumping all over the more sedate and elegant standard poodle however, she finally put him in his place.  After all, this is a She-She market, not a dog park.

Here's another beauty ... so calm and sweet ... and SOFT!!!  She must be bathed and groomed at LEAST once a week!!  My dogs fall into the dog park category ... there's not much bathing done around here.

From there, we decided to drive up to AJ's market where they might have some Gruyere cheese I was looking for.  Talk about She-She ... good heavens ... I've never been in a grocery store as fancy as this one.  Every tomato was in it's place and it was so quiet!!

As we walked around looking for the cheese, we passed the meat counter.  Lobster was so expensive it didn't even have a price tag.  If you need to ask, you can't afford it.  We sauntered slowly by the massive array of chicken, lamb, pork and fish before coming to a stop at the fillet mignon.  They looked like really nice steaks, but the $44.99 a pound price tag was a Debby Downer.  Good grief ... I've never even paid that much in a restaurant where it was COOKED for me!!  I would have taken some pictures, but I was desperately trying NOT to call attention to myself.

Laughing at our beer budgets while we were in the Champagne section, we finally found the cheese, but surprisingly they did not have what I was looking for.  I almost bought an $8.00 cupcake to see if it tasted better than my $2 variety, but ended up with a $6 jar of corn/chili salsa to pour over cream cheese.  My RV friends will appreciate that at our next rally.

Just out the door was a William Sonoma store.  Coincidently, I have a Christmas gift card from there ... let's check it out.  This one was also very expensive for our tastes, but Pat found a couple of items right away.  Everything I wanted was twice my gift certificate, so I ended up with a very expensive chef's knife.  I'm sure the $19.99 ginzou knife at home would have been fine, but the 6" chef knife WAS free.

As we drove around the neighborhood of million dollar homes oohing and awwing, I thought it might be prudent to take a quick look at a modular house that was on the market before asking to go inside. After picking up Miss Patty's sewing machine at the tune-up shop, we headed South.

Who wouldn't want to live on Hound Dog Road?  That was our destination, but when you get out in the suburbs too far, roads become dirt paths going every which direction with no street signs.  It's up to the neighborhood to repair the roads and they choose not to.  I'd show pictures, but it was all I could do to drive!!

Talk about an off0-road experience!!  The girls heads were hitting the ceiling as I bounced along over ruts and ditches WAY too deep for the motorhome.  After a couple of wrong turns, we finally located the property.  What a shame.  It was a huge 2400 square foot home on one acre ... a corner lot.   It needed paint VERY badly, not to mention a bulldozer for the back yard ... and hit that road too if you would please!!

It's not that the neighborhood looked bad, but this house had steel bars on every single window.   We took a shortcut to get out, which was just as bad as the road we came in on.  My motorhome would never make it.  RATS!!  Another one down the drain.

After dropping Pat and Patty off at their respective houses, I went home to contemplate how to become more organized in both my RV and my house in California.  Pat had so many neat ideas, some of which she picked up at the Container Store.  I think I need to go there.

The sunset was not as spectacular as I have seen, but it's fun to sit outside and listen to the coyotes talk to each other while snapping a few pictures from the band platform.

Everyone coming to the Escapee Rally here in March will be happy to know all the sewer hookups have been inspected and the new RV park is ready to go.  Just watch out for those dips upon entering that area.  There's a pretty good drop between the road coming in and the parking spots.  I doubt my rig would make it without bottoming out.  Fifth wheel rigs might fare a little better.