Chase Alumni Association

CAA Visits Tucson, AZ

Escape the Cold in March 2025, Connect with Friends!

JOIN US for a four-night-three-day warm- weather CAA sojourn in Tucson, Arizona, March 3 through 7, 2025.

Tucson is a UNESCO City of Gastronomy for its Native American and Mexican culinary influences, a city with the Old West in its DNA and, increasingly, a cultural and academic hub in the southwest. (One writer has quipped that “what Austin is to Texas, Tucson is to Arizona”!) March temperatures are usually in the mid-to-upper 70s or low 80s, and it’s usually dry.

You can extend your stay on your own to hike, play golf, go birding, stay at a spa (the original Canyon Ranch!), or visit Phoenix, Scottsdale or other nearby sites of historic, cultural and recreational interest.) 

We’re hoping to attract 30 to 35 participants from around the country to Tucson, aka “the Old Pueblo”. You’ll need to be a dues-paying CAA member to register and may bring one guest. Let’s gather ‘round the cacti and the OK Corral! 

We will be staying downtown, next to the University of Arizona campus, at Graduate by Hilton Tucson, a 4-star hotel that is part of the boutique Graduate Hotels chain newly acquired by Hilton. (You can use your Hilton Honors points to pay for your room or earn points.) We are arranging a group rate for the hotel, but you will be responsible for making your own reservations and paying the hotel directly. You are also responsible for your own travel to and from Tucson.

Here are highlights of the trip, organized around three themes. Details are subject to change.

Monday, March 3, 2025

Guests arrive. Informal dinner at our hotel's rooftop restaurant, The Moonstone, from 6:30 pm. Each participant will receive an $85 voucher to order their own food and drinks, for the indoor/outdoor restaurant. The outdoor area has fire pits and stunning city views.

Tuesday, March 4, 2025: Focus on Tucson’s History, Ecology and Food Heritage

► Visit Mission Garden (“Tucson’s Birthplace”)

► Step-on/off bus tour of historic Tucson, led by one of the city’s leading local historians

► Visit the renowned Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, offering a botanical garden, zoo and more

► Enjoy a unique dinner at the historic Arizona Inn, featuring speaker Gary Paul Nabhan, the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems in the Southwest Center, University of Arizona. He founded the Center for Regional Food Studies. Nabhan, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award, is recognized internationally as a desert food scholar and farming activist. He is a pioneer in both the food re-localization movement and in heirloom seed conservation. Nabhan co-created Native Seed/SEARCH and has written nearly 30 books on food and agriculture (including a book on Mezcal!). Our dinner will be partly inspired by his upcoming cookbook on food of the Sonoran desert area and will include a Mezcal/tequila tasting.

Wednesday, March 5, 2025: Gems, Aviation and Heavenly Music

► Visit Tucson’s newest and highly regarded attraction, the Norville Gem & Mineral Museum

► Our main meal of the day will be lunch at El Charro, the oldest Mexican restaurant in the United States, beloved by politicians, celebrities and lovers of true Mexican food.

► We will go on a private trolley tour of the Pima Air & Space Museum.

► Dinner is on your own (near the hotel or the Leo Rich Theater in downtown Tucson) before we hear nationally acclaimed musicians perform music of Debussy, Brahms, Beethoven, Messiaen in a concert that is part of the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. There is a pre-concert lecture, if you're interested.

NOTE: March 5th is Ash Wednesday. Our first group activity of the day will start a little later to afford participants time to go to church to get ashes if they observe the practice. 

Thursday, March 6, 2025: The Old West! Cowboys!

► Our private chartered tour bus and guide will take us through Gates Pass and Saguaro National Park en route to historic San Xavier Del Bac Mission.

► We then get a taste of the Old West in Tombstone – "the town too tough to die" – with a box lunch at Big Nose Kate’s Saloon and a reenactment of the shootout at the OK Corral. We'll have free time to walk and shop our way around Tombstone before heading to the historic Boot Hill Graveyard. Yes, it’s touristic, but it’s great fun, and there’s lots of history. We’ll be well-prepped by our guide on the bus ride and tour itself.

► On the way back, we'll drive by the world's largest Aviation Boneyard (known to lovers of The Best Years of Our Lives from the scene where Dana Andrews relives his glory days as a WWII bomber pilot in a field of retired planes), at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

► For our final dinner together, we'll have BBQ at the White Stallion Ranch, and be entertained by  Bill Ganz, a cowboy singer and teller of Western tales.  

Friday, March 7, 2025: Departures   

► To get a feel for Tucson and some of the places we'll be visiting, read a story about five of native daughter Linda Ronstadt's favorite places in Tucson.                    

► For more info: Andrea Axelrod | news@chasealum.org | 212.865.3492