Sky Islands and Red Rocks
After finishing our camping expedition in the Chiris with the Birding Co-op, most of our camping buddies headed to Tucson for the Southeast Arizona Birding Festival . Nikki and I, however, had a different route: we needed to the head to the nearest center of population to get the tire patched on our lemon of a rental car. Thankfully our birding companion Corey had already dealt with flat tires in the Chiris before, and he pointed us to a Ford dealership in the town of Lordsburg just across the state border in New Mexico. That place proved to be cheap and efficient, and it was only $25 to get our tire patched up before we were ready to go. I still would have rather spared myself the extra 2 hours of driving, and that was sadly only the first of several rental car issues we were to deal with on our Arizona trip. Back in Tucson, we were sharing an AirBnb with most of the other Co-op folks. The place was mostly great, located not too far from the conference center and with a nice pool