Tucson is not a particularly pretty town.  In mid-summer heat the dusty roads and look-alike shopping centers shimmer and visually pollute your view.  Yet look to the north and the mountains are perfect.  Or go out east or west of the town and just before, or maybe well after, your patience with more ugly houses runs out, there is that beautiful desert. 

I once took my family out into the beautiful desert for a picnic.  Disaster hardly describes the bugs and the heat and the dirty sand.  We should have guessed: we were the only people in the picnic area parking lot.  From then on it was to the Desert Museum or Old Tucson where corporate control produces a semblance of shade and entertainment. 

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