We slept in till about 8 am. No sunrise this morning, but when Teresa went outside she noticed the cloud formations and came and got me. Very dramatic. We also noticed that houses here do not have lawns, just rocks and desert plants. Being from the Pacific Northwest (wet side) it all looks very dusty and barren to me. Yesterday I noticed a lot of street names ended in "verde." Our host told us that means "green" in Spanish. I told Teresa this morning as we were driving to the Gem Show along one of the "green" roads, "They call this green??" Teresa said, "It's all relative."
We found the signs for the Gem Show and entered the parking lot. It was as if we were attending a concert or something. They had lots of people directing traffic. We got parked and followed folks into the door of a gigantic tent. A woman stopped us at the door and asked if we had registered. We looked puzzled and she said, "this show is wholesale only." We asked where we could go and she pointed to a stack of thick magazine-like show guides. "All the information you need is in there." So we went out to the car to try and figure out our next move.
After consulting the guide and a map, we decided to try the 22nd and I=10 location and headed out. After a few wrong turns due to human (me) error, we arrived at a large tent with a park-yourself parking lot. We scored a spot right in front and headed inside. WOW. Folks say you can't really describe the Gem Show--you have to experience it. And what an experience it is. We entered a huge tent filled with vendors selling jewelry of all kinds, rocks, gemstones, beads, marble carvings, and various related goods from all over the world.
It took us over an hour to get through the tent. Hungry for more, we went under the freeway to a frontage road with a number of motels each taken over by the Gem Show. Parking lots were occupied , lobbies were occupied, the restaurants were occupied, even the ground-floor rooms were occupied by tents and vendors. Sort of a new take off on Occupy Tucson.
We finally found an unoccupied restaurant at about 3pm and stopped to eat and rest our feet, and to get ready for the hike back to the car. I was so glad we have been hiking every day. This was a hike, just a different type of trail. After finding our car again (with a few wrong turns), we stopped at Fry's to pick up a pizza and headed home with our treasures and sore feet.
Tomorrow we are going to hike through the craft district at Tubac.
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