Day 18 - Return to Tucson

The morning of Day 18 was bright, sunny, and calm. What a change from last night! We got dressed, put the camper down, and hit the road. Well almost, as we were pulling out of our camping space, the neighbor came over to ask if we knew that we still had the wheel on the front tongue. No, no we did not. On the way in to Indio on Friday, we kept seeing advertisements for date milk shakes. So, we decided to stop at Shield's Date Garden to have breakfast and a date milk shake. I was expecting a diner, since the restaurant was advertising that they sold everything under the sun including tourist souvenirs. When we walked in the first sight that greeted us was rows and rows of souvenirs and a soda fountain counter. So, we naturally thought this was the dining space there. The lady behind the counter asked if we wanted date milk shakes; we answered yes, that and breakfast. My, was that the magic word. She ushered us through the souvenir and all-things-date-for-sale shop to the back into what can only be described as an upscale garden oasis patio.



We had a fabulous breakfast. I had an eggplant, mushroom, tomato and feta cheese omelette. It was fluffy and buttery; just the way I like it. Carol had two eggs sunny-side-up with hashbrowns and fruit. Both breakfasts came with their specialty walnut and date toast. We were both happy that we had not found this place before we were on our way out of town because it really would have blown a hole in our budgets. After breakfast, we bought postcards and chocolate covered dates from the shop, and took a tour of their gardens. The gardens were huge and done up as life-sized biblical scenes. It could have been kind of kitschy, but it was not.

And then we hit the road. The winds had started coming up again while we were eating breakfast, but no where near as frightening as the previous night in the camper. We drove the whole way to Tucson along I-10, with some steady winds from the NW. Luckily this was mostly from behind us and not from the side except for a long stretch along the Chiriaco Mountains where we ran into a huge dust storm that was blowing in from the camper's left side. But the winds must have been more like 15 mph, as the camper was not being pushed off the road by the winds.

We drove thru Phoenix at rush hour on a Monday - of course - but traffic did not seem that bad. And we arrived in Tucson about 7 pm to discover that Dan and Colleen had made vegetable soup. Just the thing as the temperatures had started to drop after that huge Sunday wind storm. It felt like returning home!