We woke up in the morning to an inch of snow in the desert and on the truck, and lots of mud in the parking lot. Temperatures were above freezing so the snow was melting fast, but Tom got outside in time to get a couple of photos.
Tom had tentatively scheduled an oil change for the truck, so after breakfast we left the campground and headed into Tucson to the garage. It was a small, privately owned mechanic who didn’t have a big enough bay for the 12’ camper, but they did it outside the garage and were happy to have Tom watch and help, which made Tom happy. They were done well before noon, so we headed to the Saguaro National Park East.
Saguaro National Park has two locations in Tucson, one on the east side of the city and one on the west. The main headquarters and Visitor Center is on the east side, and we’d already hiked near the west side location, so we wanted to visit the east side. According to the park volunteers who helped us plan a hike, the saguaros on the east side are bigger and older. There may not be quite so many of them, but there are still enough that they call that area of the park a cactus forest. And, they are huge and very old. We learned that they are very slow growing and don’t even flower until they are about 35 years old, and don’t start to get their iconic branches until they are almost 100. The big ones with lots of arms are estimated to be 150 years old or more. We drove the 8-mile loop around Cactus Forest Drive before heading to the other side of the park for a hike.
Saguaro National Park has two locations in Tucson, one on the east side of the city and one on the west. The main headquarters and Visitor Center is on the east side, and we’d already hiked near the west side location, so we wanted to visit the east side. According to the park volunteers who helped us plan a hike, the saguaros on the east side are bigger and older. There may not be quite so many of them, but there are still enough that they call that area of the park a cactus forest. And, they are huge and very old. We learned that they are very slow growing and don’t even flower until they are about 35 years old, and don’t start to get their iconic branches until they are almost 100. The big ones with lots of arms are estimated to be 150 years old or more. We drove the 8-mile loop around Cactus Forest Drive before heading to the other side of the park for a hike.
After driving around the loop road, we left the Rincón Visitor Center area and drove around to the edge of the park to a trailhead. Tom had mapped out a hike based on information from the park volunteer, but we were planning to do the hike mostly for exercise since we’ve been hiking in the desert since Texas, and we’d seen a lot of saguaros in the previous day’s hike. We didn’t think we’d see much that was new and exciting.
We were, delightfully, wrong. Maybe it was because of the snow, or maybe it was just that this desert and the saguaros are so different from where we’ve been recently, but we both ended up enjoying the hike and the scenery way more than expected. We never expected to have to wade through mud in the desert, but discovered that desert mud isn’t all that offensive. It’s not deep, and not sticky or slippery. We also didn’t expect to still see snow at 3PM in the desert, but as we climbed we saw snow on the ground, and on some of the saguaros. What we really didn’t expect was so much water in the desert. At one point, we had to turn back and replan our route because we came to a stream that was too deep to cross. Then we climbed a mountain and found a dam with a pretty significant amount of water flowing through it. Then we heard running water and found a big waterfall, and then another, and another as we hiked around the mountain. We saw lots of tracks and lots of birds, as well as a bunch of rabbits. I wanted to see a Gila Monster; we weren’t that lucky, but with all of the surprising things we saw, we ended up being thrilled with the hike.
We were, delightfully, wrong. Maybe it was because of the snow, or maybe it was just that this desert and the saguaros are so different from where we’ve been recently, but we both ended up enjoying the hike and the scenery way more than expected. We never expected to have to wade through mud in the desert, but discovered that desert mud isn’t all that offensive. It’s not deep, and not sticky or slippery. We also didn’t expect to still see snow at 3PM in the desert, but as we climbed we saw snow on the ground, and on some of the saguaros. What we really didn’t expect was so much water in the desert. At one point, we had to turn back and replan our route because we came to a stream that was too deep to cross. Then we climbed a mountain and found a dam with a pretty significant amount of water flowing through it. Then we heard running water and found a big waterfall, and then another, and another as we hiked around the mountain. We saw lots of tracks and lots of birds, as well as a bunch of rabbits. I wanted to see a Gila Monster; we weren’t that lucky, but with all of the surprising things we saw, we ended up being thrilled with the hike.
Mud!
The stream we couldn’t cross, from higher ground
A very Mountain Pine Ridge type waterfall, in the middle of the desert in Arizona
And another! All afternoon, we’d been asking around about places to camp to avoid going back to the very trashy BLM site of the previous night. The mud certainly didn’t help, but the whole place was full of trash and dog shit, as well as lots of campers in bad repair, and it had left a bad taste in our mouths. However, all of the other boondocking sites people had recommended came with the caveat of “the road to get there is a little rough, and it might be slick because of the snow.” So, we sucked it up and went back to Sawyer Mountain BLM, but instead of parking in the sketchy muddy lot that’s a little off the highway, we went to the more crowded graveled lot closer to the highway that had more nicer campers. That was an okay choice, and we had a quiet and uneventful night.