Day 12: Tucson

We ended up staying in Tucson today. We discovered that the Tubac Arts and Craft Festival starts on Feb. 8th. So we will probably go there on Wednesday.

Today we hit the outskirts of Tucson: DeGrazia's historic area, Cabino Canyon Recreational Area, Mt. Lemmon and Summerhaven, and finally Agua Callente Park.

The DeGrazia compound included the artist's home, the Mission on the Sun, and the Gallery in the Sun. The 10-acre historic district in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains was designed and built from the ground up by Ettore "Ted" DeGrazia, who achieved world-wide acclaim for his paintings of native children in the Sonoran Desert.

DeGrazia built the gallery from natural materials including cactus, using traditional adobe bricks crafted on-site. The gallery opened in 1965 and houses more than 15,000 DeGrazia originals.

Adjoining the gallery is Mission in the Sun built in 1952 in honor of Father Kino and dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico. It is an adobe structure with rustic rock floors, open-air ceiling, and decorated with DeGrazio's murals and art. DeGrazio's grave is behind the mission.

Next to the Mission is the artist's home which is very rustic and beautiful. Part of the home is now used as a gallery for visiting artists. DeGrazia helped many new artists get started during his lifetime and that continues to be an important function of his gallery.

We saw a film of several interviews with DeGrazia showing how he crafted some of the gallery. One of the floors has cactus slices (like tiles) in the floor. I didn't realize it but under that green spiked exterior, cacti has a skeleton that looks like wood with holes in it. It's hard to recognize a dead cactus--looks like a dead tree. Anyway, in the film he referenced the "jumping cactus." He said the cactus didn't jump, people did when they ran into it. We saw some of these in the garden. They have these little burrs that easily "jump" onto your clothes. Plant life here is downright dangerous. Cacti have developed all kind of different ways to impale you.

Cabino Canyon Recreation Area is run by the Forest Service. They have a visitor's center with all sorts of exhibits and pamphlets on the animal and plant life in the Sonoran Desert. They have a number of trails and a tram that acts as a shuttle between viewpoints. We didn't take the tram, but went on a short nature walk where we saw examples of many different types of plants and cacti. There were lots of saguaro -- we are in no danger of missing them! One of the most interesting sights was a crested saguaro. Evidently sometimes the cactus goes crazy and varies from the usual pattern. This is rare, this is the only one I've seen -- so far.

The nature trail we took was called the Bajada trail. Bajada (pronounced buh-HA=duh) is the Spanish word for "gently sloping skirt of sediments surrounding a desert mountain range." Glad they have a single word for that.

Next we drove up Mt. Lemmon which towers 8,000 + feet over Tucson. The road was in good shape. It was constructed during the Depression by the Conservation Corps -- all by hand. It has lots of twists, turns and switchbacks -- but has a lot of places for cars to park along the road and numerous view points, vistas, and campgrounds. We stopped at a vista view and took a short rock climb to a fantastic view of Tucson below.

We went all the way to the top. The temperature and vegetation changed quickly along the way. Gone were the saguaro. Instead we had snow and tall evergreen trees. It looked a lot like the Grand Canyon area. We stopped at a small village called Summer Haven. This is where folks from Tucson go to get out of the heat of the summer. Most houses are log-cabin style. The town was nearly destroyed in a forest fire in 2003. Most of the cabins we saw were new and the destruction of the trees was obvious on the hillside.

We stopped at a recently rebuilt restaurant called the "Cookie Cabin." They served pizza-sized cookies and pizzas. We split a peanut butter cookie and a pepperoni pizza. Strange combination--but yummy. We skipped the ski resort on our way down -- although it is unusual to find one of those this far south.

Final stop was the Agua Allente Park. This is a true oasis. The park surrounds an artesian spring fed lake that has ducks and turtles and is surrounded by tall palm trees. We took a short hike through just a fraction of the site. It was very peaceful and refreshing, a relief from the desert.

We got home about 5:30, and after taking a Dr. Pepper break, we took a walk around the neighborhood in search of a good sunset view. The sunsets here are great. There are usually a few clouds around that swirl around in the crimson glow of the sunset. As and extra plus, you have the mountains in the background. We were busy taking pictures and happened to look behind us. There was a large cloud with a glow at the top. The glow was the moon and we watched as it rose out of the cloud. Quite a show. Once it rose, we realized the cloud looked a lot like a UFO. A beautiful Arizona night.