Day 12: Oro Valley

Today we stayed close by.  In the morning T and I set off for a hike in near-by Catalina State Park.  It was forcast to be near 90 today, so we started off early.

We entered the park and drove to the "trail head."  there were a number of trails, all well marked, that started from this area.  We chose the Canyon Loop Trail which was about 2 and a half miles.  The trail started up an incline to a ridge  with a wonderful view of the Catalina Mountains.  Saguaros were everwhere and the scenery was awesome.

About halfway through the loop we encountered a number of steps going down to the river bed below.  There was a bench at the top with two very tired hikers who had just hiked up the stairs going the opposite way on the trail.  There were quite a few steps going down and we decided that we were glad we had started in the other direection.

Once we reached the bottom of the steps, we found ourselves walking along a creek bed and there was actually water in the creek.  It was cool and refreshing and made us once again appreciate the value of water in the desert.  Eventually we found ourself on hiigher ground inhabited by a number of majestic saguaro.

We noticed signs in front of some which gave the name of the saguaro, stating that the suguaro had been adopted.  We found a sign that said "crested" and sure enough that suguaro was crested (only the second one we have seen.)

After completing that trail, we drove to the trial head for the Romero Ruin Trail (.75 miles) .  This trail let up to an archaeologcal site that includes the remains of a Hohokam village dating back to about 500 A.D. It was very interesting.

It was getting warm so we opted for a hike through Walmart out of the sun.  And we found that the Walmart actually had shaded parking under a carport structure.  Most of the cars were parked out in the sun, so we had no trouble finding a shaded place.  We couldn't understand why more cars did not park in the shade.

We got some tortilla soup for lunch and when we arrived back to the condo for lunch found that R had taken a hike down the wash and seen another Cardinal.  After lunch we packed and spent some time out at the pool.  It was very relaxing after a busy week.

About 4:30 T and I started off for another hike.  We went to Honey Bee Canyon again (we were there yesterday).  This time we took the entire 3 miles (up and back).  We knew there were ancient petroglyphs somewhere on the trail.  The trail ended an a rocky area and we spent some time looking for the petroglyphs to no avail.  So we started back and about halfway back spotted a rock with ancient pictures carved into it.

We made it back just in time to experience the wonderful Tucson sunset.

Tomorrow we leave Tucson and head for Sedona.