Arizona -- Finding The Right Stuff At A Tucson Guest Ranch

Most of hotels I stay in never seem quite right. Too expensive, with crummy (although smiling) service. Or low-priced and tacky, with sagging beds.

And no matter what the price, there always seem to be noisy people in the next room or sirens wailing out on the street.

But this spring I stumbled across the "right" place when I landed at the Flying V Ranch in Tucson, Arizona.

The Flying V is a no-frills guest ranch, with just a few cottages, tucked under the rugged, red-rock Santa Catalina mountains which soar to 9,000 feet.

Although only 16 miles north of downtown Tucson and next door to the luxurious Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, the Flying V is a quiet little desert oasis.

The Ventana Canyon resort is built on what used to be Flying V land. And to get to the Flying V, you first must wind through the resort's sprawling parking lot and then find a road at the back of the lot marked by two hay bales. Those bales are the start of a dirt road that leads to the Flying V.

The Flying V is just a hundred yards down the narrow dirt road from the resort (and some fancy subdivisions), but it's a hundred miles away in mood.

The Ventana Canyon resort has 400 sumptuous rooms (suites cost up to $1,400 a night); elegant restaurants; tennis courts; a golf course ($100 per player is the non-guest rate); pools; and even a waterfall amid the desert landscape.

The Flying V, on the other hand, has four 1920s stone and adobe

cottages for guests (a fifth is being restored) and a creaky old ranch house with a wooden verandah. The ranch house is mostly used for wedding receptions.

The only recreation at the Flying V is a small swimming pool. (The ranch's horses are long gone.)

However, guests can use some of the facilities of the Ventana Canyon resort (for instance, the spa which includes a gym, pool and jacuzzi.)

There's also an excellent hiking trail that starts on the ranch's land and then crosses into the Coronado National Forest, winding for eight miles up the narrow Ventana Canyon high into the mountains.

The one-story cottages of the Flying V are strung along a creek at the mouth of Ventana Canyon; the hills, studded with cactus, loom over the ranch. This spring the creek was a picture-perfect bubbling brook, thanks to heavy rain, although much of the year it's dry or a mere trickle.

Grapefruit and orange trees cluster around the stone and stucco cottages of the Flying V - you can pick your own fruit for breakfast.

Cactuses are everywhere, including the tall, forked, saguaro cactus - the kind that's always in cowboy movies - which is characteristic of the Sonoran desert around Tucson.

The cottages - one- and two-bedrooms - are simple but comfortable.

My family stayed in what appeared to be the best - a two-bedroom cottage right on the creek, with big windows looking out over the creek and south toward the lights of Tucson.

It had a simply furnished, but comfortable, living/dining room with a wooden deck.

The kitchen was nicer than ours at home - lots of counter space, lots of dishes, a dishwasher, and a window looking out over the creek. (A supermarket is a 10-minute drive away; for those who don't want to cook, the Ventana resort has restaurants and there are plenty of other restaurants in the Tucson outskirts within a 10- or 15-minute drive.)

At night, the creek provided the only sound as it tumbled over water-smoothed rocks. And the lights of Tucson couldn't drown the stars.

What I liked best about the Flying V is what it doesn't have; no crowds, no noise; nothing fancy; no pressure to do things. It's a place to sit and read, to walk, to sleep late. And it's a good base from which to make sightseeing forays around Tucson.

But the Flying V isn't for everyone. There's no restaurant; no room service - in our three-day stay we made our own beds and swept our kitchen floor (although someone did take out the garbage). The decor is definitely on the simple side - such as living room furniture that doesn't match.

There are TVs and telephones in all the cottages. But there's only one number for all the phones (which includes the ranch's main phone). So the phone rings all the time, with people calling for reservations or information. The solution? Unplug the phone except when you want to call out.

In all things, the Flying V is definitely low-key. We hardly met the owner/managers, John and Victoria Shields, whose modern home is on a knoll above the cottages.

When we arrived, they shouted down from their patio that our cottage door was open, and left us to our own devices for the next few days.

We did see them - briefly - when we paid our bill. ................................................................ More information

-- Flying V Ranch, 6810 Flying V Ranch Road, Tucson, AZ 85715. Phone 1-602-299-0702.

Rates are lower in the hot, summer off-season (when Tucson temperatures often soar above 100 degrees) and range from $50 nightly for a small one-bedroom suite to $95 for the two-bedroom cottage, now until Sept. 30. Winter rates (from Oct. 1): $65 for small one-bedroom suite to $110 for the two-bedroom cottage). The cottages have both air-conditioning and heat.

-- For information on Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, phone 1-800-234-5117.

-- For information on visiting Tucson, contact the Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau, 1-602-624-1889.