SWEETWATER TRAIL...ONE OF OUR FAVORITE HIKES

Monday, February 20 – This morning we hiked one of our favorite trails here in Tucson, AZ. It is located on the west side of Tucson in Sweetwater Preserve. This is a very popular trail area so if you want to hike here we recommend heading out early to beat the crowds. There are also many mountain bikers that ride in this area so you find yourself sharing the trial with them. We hiked on President's Day so that may have added to the number of people out of this beautiful day.



The parking area is large so parking is not a problem. We started west on the Saguaro Vista Trial.

This is a very memorable area. Thousands upon thousands of Saguaro Cactus dot the mountainside.

We even found a crested Saguaro along this part of the trail.



We continued on taking most of the perimeter trails until reaching the “Spine” trail intersection.

Here we turned east picking up several trails until we returned to the trail head. The trails are well marked with signs showing “You are here” spot on the trail map.






We covered about 4.2 miles in under 3 hours (We stop often for pictures.) and took just over 12,000 steps. The elevation gain is minimal. As mentioned above, we hiked this trail previously and have always remembered it as one of the best for seeing Saguaro Cactus. We weren't disappointed!

This baby was sure a strange one.


A garden of prickly pear cacti greeted us along the tail.

That is Mt. Lemon with snow on the top.

Birds were every where.

We no more arrived home when a car pulled up. Here were Mary and Dave, long-time readers of our blog. We have never met them. They are staying at the campground right down the road. It was wonderful chatting with them and learning more about their home in Canada. Thanks for stopping by Mary and Dave. Their dog, Houdini, had to wait in the car. He liked Bella a bit too much....lol It was great to meet you three.

After a quick bite to eat, we took Bella, our cat, on a hike in the desert near the campground. She loves the desert!

We then relaxed for several hours before cleaning-up to meet RV friends for happy hour at Buffalo Wild Wings. This is the first time we have had the opportunity to meet up with Monaliza and Steve, Sue and Dave, Lisa and Hans. Thanks for a great time, and thanks Monaliza for the photo.

L-R: John, Dave, Sue, Marsha, Paul, Steve, Monaliza, Lisa,
Hans, Pam.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!

SAGUARO NATIONAL PARK

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.

Prehistoric Hohokam Rock Art.

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!

SIGHTSEEING IN TUCSON, AZ

Thursday, February 16 – We've been hearing tons of gun fire since arriving at Justin's Diamond J Campground in Tucson, AZ. A couple neighbors informed us that they were having a shooting tournament at the nearby The Tucson Trap and Skeet Club. This morning we headed out that way to see what was going on. 

Man, were we surprised! This club has 50 skeet shooting stations (4 shooters/station) on 380 acres, a 9,000 sq. foot club house, buildings for various shooting clubs, a restaurant, bar and 200 FHU 50amp RV sites (available to club members only).

A very unique way to carry a shotgun.

There were nearly 200 contestants shooting this morning, and the competition goes on into the night. The shooting range is lighted. These shooters were sure going through the shells and clay pigeons. A great deal of money here not counting the thousands of dollars many of these guns cost or the hundreds of RV's parked in the campground. But the men and women shooters and spectators were having a fun day!

We then headed to a historical section of Tucson to see some of the restored historical homes. Nice that these homes were saved and restored.

Our next stop was the Old Town Artisan area. 

This block of about 20 small stores were filled with items produced by local artists. There is also a restaurant where we could enjoy lunch or dinner. We were surprised with the pricing. Although many of the pieces were pretty expensive, a person could also pick-up a piece at a reasonable price. Of course, Marsha found a couple “early Christmas” presents for a couple of her friends.

We guess rocking horses are out and rocking pigs are in.

Our last stop was one of the many Tucson bike trails. We had loaded our bikes in the truck so we could ride the Rillito River Park Trail. This trail is still under construction and will eventually be a circular route, called the Loop, and will cover about 25 miles. The trail along the east side of the river is complete, so we wanted to ride down and back on the same side.

Our good intentions soon flew out the window when we realized the direction we were heading was a very gradual uphill slope. After about six miles of huffing and puffing, we sadly decided to turn around and head back to the trail head. Ahhhh.... going back was much easier! We have some conditioning to do, that's for sure!

We returned to the RV Park to relax for the rest of the day. Blogger friends, Larry and Gerry, Road Runner,  stopped by for a short visit. They are staying at the opposite end of the park. We had a nice chat and enjoyed the visit.

Yesterday, we were lucky enough to meet up with friends from our church back in Canton, Ohio. Barb and Bob are spending a month in Tucson, and we both had Wednesday afternoon free. What a blessing it is to not only do we get to meet up with blogger fiends, but meet up with friends from back home. 

Bob, Barb, Marsha, Paul

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!