Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Tucson Is HOT and COOL

Just a note to update y'all on our life so far in Tucson. We got into town Sunday evening after about 30hrs of driving over 2 days and checked into the cutest bed and breakfast (we're taking notes for when we open ours someday!!). It's a little adobe condo with patios, fountains, flowers and shade, which is quite hard to come by in these parts!

Monday we drove around Tucson a bit to get our bearings and we have to say that while it's very different from Minneapolis, it's quite charming - with hues of pinks and browns replacing the greens and blues that we have become so accustomed to in the Midwest. Leave it to us to have already successfully located great grocery stores, bakeries, wine stores and restaurants, as well as running and biking shops.

Yesterday, we looked at about 3-4 apartments and picked one and signed on it this morning. It's a 2 bedroom/2 bath (we're hoping for lots of visitors) with vaulted ceilings in the living room, 2 balconies, and a great community pool. It's next to a horse race track, some soccer fields and the Rollito River biking and running trails. It's at the beginning of the Catalina Foothills, north of downtown and the university. Our street address is East River Road (full address below), which does slightly remind us of home, but once you take a look down at the river or rather, the dry river bed, and up at the Saguaro covered mountains, we are quickly reminded that this is nothing like Minnesota. The apartment is near all sorts of great restaurants, grocery stores, shopping and is only a 20/30 minute bike ride to the U of A. (We did also notice some condos nearby that rent by the day, week and month - for those of you who'd like a bit more space/privacy when you visit the Godfreys!)

We've been warned of the insanely HOT weather, which we no doubt will experience, but since we've been here, it's been quite bearable nothing worse than Minneapolis last week - 90s and humid. It's monsoon season, which means it's humid (for AZ) and it rains at least once a day for a little while - at the moment a pretty awesome storm is passing through - the Rollito River bed is sure to fill with this amazing downpour where the skies have seriously opened up.

One thing that has surprised us a little bit is that Arizona does no do daylight savings so, right now we're on Pacific time and this fall it'll switch to Mountain time. It gets light out around 5am and dark by 8pm so it's early to bed and early to rise, which works out pretty
well for the early bird in us. And will be great when Tom's work day will be from 6am-3pm to coincide with Capella's work day in Minneapolis.

I think it's safe to say that though we'll miss home and all of you a TON, life in Tucson is going to be good. We're going to start a blog with pictures soon, for those of you who would like to do some chair traveling to this part of the world and stay posted on the ups and downs, the funny and sad, the weird or exciting and normal of our life here in the Southwest - where the sun is said to shine over 300 days a
year – except for right now!