Friday, February 17 – We headed to Saguaro National Park on the west side of Tucson this morning. We enjoyed a hike among the magnificent Saguaro cactus. We just love the cactus, rocks, and desert environment!
We started our stop at the Visitor's Center to get information about the available trails and what they would recommend for our physical condition. We prefer not to get on a trail with too much elevation gain (over 750-800 feet) over a short distance. With their help we decided to connect a couple short trails together to end up with a hike of about 4 miles. The trails roamed up and down of the side of the mountain keeping elevation changes to a manageable level.
We started on Wild Dog Trail which meandered among the Saguaro cactus and the rocky foothills of several nearby mountains. There were hundreds of “Kodak” opportunities, and Marsha took advantage of many of them.
We then walked about half a mile down a dirt road and connected to the short Signal Hill Trail which wound up a small rocky outcrop filled with numerous petroglyphs. Some possible purposes of rock art (petroglyphs) include: hunting, fertility or spiritual symbols; boundary markers or landmarks; records of important events; clan symbols; and solstice and calendar markers. This was an interesting addition to our hike today.
We finished the hike by retracing our route back to the trail head. We covered 4 miles in a little less then 3 hours and taking about 10,794 steps. A perfect hike in the mountains around Tucson, AZ.
Guess what! We are finally caught up with our posts. We hope to never get that far behind again!
Thanks for stopping by. Hope y'all come back real soon. Have a great day!
Saguaro National Park is quite nice!! I bet there are trails and trails in this park. Glad you all found one that was just right. Love the Hohokam rock art. Petroglyphs have always intrigued me.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful park that is, it was quite a few years ago that we were there. Nice to get caught up with you postings again.
ReplyDeleteReally great pics. . .loved visiting it all again with you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great pictures that remind us of the appeal of Saguaro National Park.
ReplyDeleteSeeing all the rock art is always fun and, of course, hiking among the beautiful desert vegetation is always wonderful. I don't remember any day cool enough for jeans and a sweatshirt!! Maybe you are out too early:)
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ReplyDeleteAnother area we just love to be in. Looks like you're doing it all.