Hiking amongst the Giant Saguaro Cacti…

Tucson is home to the the the Saguaro National Park and the city itself divides the park into two sections, one east of town and the other west of town. It is named after the  large saguaro cactus, found in higher desert environments.

It has been a long tome since we have visited the eastern part of the park known as the Rincon Mountain District. Entry into the park is $25 per vehicle but we use our America the Beautiful Pass for free entry. This lifetime pass for seniors is a true money saver!

In this section of the park there is an 8.3 mile loop drive on Cactus Forest Drive. This road is mostly an unpaved dirt road so be forewarned. Although it is rough in a few spots it is still easily navigable by normal cars and our Honda CRV had no problem..

The Saguaro National Park encompasses 92,000 acres. Typical of Sonoran Desert landscapes this park has a high density of the giant saguaro cactus. The park also has overs 165 miles of trails. While we did little hiking in the park this year we did do a few strolls at pull outs along the loop drive.

The drive was beautiful as some of the giant saguaro cacti were beginning to bloom and the various species of cane cholla cactus were in bloom as well (yellow, orange and red). Spring is always a good time to see the plants blooming and with the wet winter this area had (including some snow this year) the desert was pretty green.

While driving amongst the large cactus is fun, hiking in them is better. So on another day we revisited one of our favorite short hikes near Tucson. The trail is called the Hidden Canyon Trail and it can be combined with other trails making a hike with a choice of lengths.

We added a small piece of trail to it to make our hike less than 3 miles, There is a steady climb initially but not too much elevation. The steady climb had us looking forward to the saddle as well as the views it provided. As we mentioned the last time we hiked this trail the density of Saguaro Cacti is this area is amazing!

The trail is a fairly narrow and mostly rocky trial but is nothing more than a low moderate rated hike. There were a few saguaros sporting buds but since it is higher here that in the national park they weren’t blooming yet. However,we were able to find a few sparse blooming spring beauties..

This is a great place to hike near a huge resort hotel and the best thing, besides the scenery, was that there was no charge for entry or for parking.

With only one more day in Tucson we were glad to be able to revisit these two beautiful places.

Sweetwater Wetlands Birding and a little disc golf in Tucson AZ

Well it was finally time to leave the greater Phoenix area and move on down the road. As many may know we never travel too far and as such our next stop was a little more than 120 miles to Tucson Arizona. We pulled in to the Rincon West RV Resort  with a plan to stay for five days of half priced camping using our Passport America card.

The resort is similar to the one we stayed at in Mesa (Tower Point) as it has many of the same amenities. We prefer to winter at Mesa rather than Tucson because Tucson is typically about 10 degrees cooler than in Mesa since it is higher in elevation.

Our first day we spent hiking and birding at the Sweetwater Wetlands in west Tucson. The park is a wildlife habitat, public park and water treatment facility all rolled into one. It was built in 1996 to handle backwash filter water from the reclaimed water plant and is now a mature wetlands with more than 2.5 miles of shady trails. It has also become a popular birding hotspot..

With temperatures in the mid to low 80’s the weather was perfect to be outdoors. We hiked the full 2.5 mile trail around the perimeter of the ponds and while hiking we were able to see many beautiful birds who call the wetlands home.

With it being spring many of the birds were singing which made them easier to find now that the trees are no longer bare. It is always nice to see a lot of green in the desert but it does make it trickier to find birds.

Our next day in Tucson we decided to go to a park nearby and play a round of disc golf. We have played this course before so we looked forward to playing it again.

The course isn’t  real long and isn’t overly challenging. However, this is a nice course laid out well in typical Mesquite desert scrub found in the Tucson area. We always enjoy playing disc golf here as it is also a good place to birdwatch which is why we carried our binoculars with us. Our plan was to play a little disc golf, birdwatch a little and then head over to happy hour in Tucson. Although we truly enjoyed our stay in Mesa, it was nice to have a change in scenery!

Last trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens…

Since we previously blogged about the Desert Botanical Gardens I won’t be adding any text about it here. I will simply share some photos of all the sights including the highlight of this visit,  the many flowering cacti. Enjoy!

Next stop Tucson AZ!

Winter 2022–2023, It’s a Wrap!

Our winter stay became a month longer than originally planned. Towerpoint invited us to come in early a discounted rate and because we stayed two weeks longer in April for me to take care of a medical issue we actually stayed four months in Mesa AZ.

We surprisingly only did a little bit of hiking mostly due to the chilly weather most of the winter this year .It seemed all the extremes limited our long hiking excursions whether it was cold,,rainy or super hot.

We did, however, enjoy the amenities of the RV park. We were able to fall into a routine of working out at the onsite fitness room five days a week and as a result we are certainly in better shape now than we first arrived. Now we just have to maintain this level of fitness sans the convenient fitness center.

We also played a little bit of disc golf, a sport we both really enjoy playing. We played some pickleball at our resort as well. We prefer just playing singles when we play pickleball as it gives us a better workout than doubles does.

We met a lot of new people who we now call friends and were lucky enough that late in the season some of our  previously made friends showed up here. It was so fun to enjoy their company as well.

There were some holiday festivities we participated in. Mardi Gras and St. Patty’s day were two of our favorite celebrations at Towerpoint.

There were plenty of happy hours at one of the many Cal-Am parks while listening to some live music. We also snuck off to visit a few Breweries and enjoyed happy hours at old town Gilbert AZ.

We were glad to see that they have cornhole boards at several of the resorts in Arizona as we missed playing this game. When we wintered in Florida this was a very popular activity.

We also visited several locations for some winter and migratory birding. Our very favorite sport was birding at the Gilbert Riparian Preserve. Sharon really enjoyed trying to capture the flitting little birds with her camera and did a great job on several of them, including this Verdin (a very tiny bird) above.

It wasn’t all fun as both Sharon and I caught Covid (omicron) while wintering in Arizona. We both still have a few lingering effects from this encounter. We also had to endure some medical issues after we visited our Dermatologist at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale AZ. Sharon had to do a lip peel for her lower lip as it had some precancerous concerns. I was unfortunate enough to need a couple of Mohs surgeries on two Basel Cell Carcinomas, both were successfully removed.

Despite these setbacks we really have enjoyed our stay here and look forward to returning soon. We went ahead and made reservations for next year but may or may not come here as it is way too far in the future to make any solid plans.

If we do come back we really do look forward to seeing our new friends again!