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!