Ta Ta Tucson

We leave very early Monday morning after a Sunday late afternoon transition with our current home owner and her daughter. They have been having a great driving vacation through much of the scenic southwest. While we have been holding down the fort, we have also done some hiking, biking, and catching up with old friends and favorite places over the past few days.

On Wednesday we did a popular in-town hike up Tumamoc Hill which is the site of some U of A research facilities and is next to Sentinel or “A” hill which we climbed last year (hill with big A on it that the students paint each year). There were a number of people out while we were there.

Information on the importance of the hill

Admiring the saguaros and the view of the greater Tucson area on the way up

One of the U of A research buildings built in the early 1900s with funds from the Carnegie Institute

View of the Santa Catalina mountains as we go up

View of the back (side without the A) of Sentinel Mountain

Later that afternoon, we had a fun meet-up with our homeowners from our 3 month house sit in Green Valley last year.

Bob has also been able to catch up with some former co-workers while we’ve been here.

On Thursday we finally rented a couple of bikes (hybrids from Fair Wheel Cycle for $25/day) to hit some of the many biking trails in Tucson. We made a day of it. We started out biking through the University campus and then up the very bike-friendly Mountain Road before hitting the Rillito Trail. Before we were done, we had biked The Loop onto the Santa Clara Trail to where it ends on Valencia before biking back into downtown Tucson onto the Aviation Pathway for a bit. Awesome!

A children’s memorial at a small park along the trail

The trail almost always run alongside a wash. This shows the wash with a sports arena on the other side.

There are a number of nice bridges along the route.

The snakehead entrance to a bridge that crosses Broadway before becoming the Aviation Pathway.

And out the other side –complete with rattle sound effects

It’s an unfortunate fact of life in the west that summer is also forest fire season. There was a fire burning near Flagstaff while we were there and since July 3, the Burro fire has been burning on Mount Lemmon. Mount Lemmon is the highest point in the Santa Catalina Mountains and is located in the Coronado National Forest just north of Tucson. It’s a popular spot for locals and visitors in the summer, as at 9,000+ feet elevation it stays much cooler than Tucson. Last year Bob and I visited it a few times for the gorgeous views and some hiking. I went up also when my sister visited to ride the ski lift. Early this week the afternoon monsoons brought much needed rain to the area, so residents and workers were allowed to go back. Friday, it was opened to the public, so we decided to drive up to visit one more time.