Stopped here, but not the place for us.  Too many theme park cronies and high pressure sales.  Cute stores, great ice cream and a good BLT and soup lunch at the Chuck wagon.  We left quite quickly and do not recommend the stop.

Stopped at the Saguaro National Park in Tuscon, Arizona.  Took the beautiful 8 mile loop drive through the large Saguaro Cactus and other varieties cactus and desert life.  Saw the cactus wren and a few other birds yet to be identified.

At 5:30 pm we met the Nat'l Park Rangers at the picnic loop for a sunset hike.  Very beautiful desert because they get about 12" of rain per year.  Saguaro cactus need water because their internal reeds running up and down the arms are filled with it. The colors at this time of year are beautiful especially at sunset.  Many flowers were starting to blossom.  Left the park at dark and drove to Redington Rd to find the camping spot we saw on our app.  We wanted to rough it in a primitive stop on the mountain before we spent time in the city.  NOTE TO ALL:  NEVER TRAVEL UP REDINGTON ROAD IN TUSCON, ARIZONA ...LET ALONE AT NIGHT...THE ROAD TURNS IN TO A NIGHTMARE AND SHOULD ONLY BE TRAVELED BY RAZORS OR OTHER OFF ROAD VEHICLES.  Our app said 8 miles but we went at least 20+ .  The 8 miles must have been as the crow flew!  The lights of the city reflect how far up the "cliffy" mountain we really were. Wonder how steep the cliffs we could not see were.  The picture below does not show the problem areas...

Another restaurant not to miss is in LasCruces is Pastaggil's.  A simple, stand at the counter to order kind of place.  The owner Larrenzo is from Italy and makes everything from scratch.  Little currants in his meatballs and secret pizza dough etc.  We talked with him for nearly an hour about many things.  Someday this new restaurant of his, will go back to the white table cloths and great wine.  What a nice night...we love meeting interesting people.  Beautiful painting too on walls and I forgot to take a picture.  Our Campsite tonight was  cute little corner with many nice trees and hedges....A Walmart special.

Stopped for one day at Fort Davis stopped at this little resurant for the best ever hot home made cinnamon rolls.  So good we ate dinner there at night too. A MUST STOP  travel point for anyone driving by....forgot to mention they had pies too.  Camped at Prude Guest Ranch.  This was off season for them and we were the only people there...somewhat creepy.  A big barking thing, right next to the camper, started barking twice after 10pm...this added to the creepy.  $11.75 tonight.
The observatory was 16miles up the road for our morning tour.  We missed the star party.  This is when we would have been able to look through telescopes ourselves at the night sky.  We missed it because it was the night before.  The star party is the reason why we wanted to go there in the first place but the night they had it they saw zero so there was no need to be disappointed.  

This was the 107" Harlan J. Smith Telescope...the hexagon was a sample of the mirrors that make up the mirror portion at the bottom of the scope.  This telescope did not have a cylinder around it so you could see all the works inside.  This is a cost effective way to build a telescope in this location, costing I believe $10 million. This is compared to the telescope they were duplicating that cost $100 million.