Saguaro National Park
Arizona, April 2019
“Tucson, Arizona is home to the nation’s largest cacti. The giant saguaro is the universal symbol of the American west. These majestic plants (are) found only in a small portion of the United States.” – NPS
Trip Highlights: West Saguaro * East Saguaro
Pictures coming . . . at some point.
Saguaro National Park is actually two distinct areas of land with the city of Tucson in between. On the day we went to West Saguaro, we actually spent most of our time at the nearby Desert Museum – more of a zoo of animals native to the region actually. We absolutely loved it! It gives such a great feel for the local ecology and we were there in late March so it was not very busy and a comfortable 75 degrees outside. We spent over 5 hrs there and easily could have spent the whole day there but alas, the National Park was calling! If I ever get caught up on my NP posts, I’ll put a blog post up on the Desert Museum.
West Saguaro
We got to the Saguaro NP West Visitor Center around 3:30pm after spending most of the day at the nearby Desert Museum. We did some souvenir shopping and caught the 15 minute movie about the park, which talked about the Natives’ connection to the land and ended with a cool reveal of the park outside when the screen and drapes opened.
It was almost 5pm when we started driving the Bajada Loop. There were big, tall saguaro everywhere! We hiked the Valley View Trail which, coincidentally, takes you to a pretty view of the valley (although town lights kind of detract from it). Everyone except Elizabeth tried touching the green part of a cactus without getting poked. : ) Definitely make an effort to hike among the saguaros and not just view them from the car. They’re all so unique!
Back driving the loop, we made it to Signal Hill at 6:15pm right before sunset and Katie ran up the hill for photos. It all felt rushed but it was beautiful nonetheless. We had brought PBJ makings but now that it was getting dark, we opted to cruise home. We had oranges, goldfish, and Gatorade on the drive and started the third Penderwicks book on CD (somewhat of a tradition now). We finally had dinner around 8pm when we got back to our townhouse rental and had the kids in bed an hour later.
East Saguaro
Our visit to East Saguaro was in the late afternoon again. (The morning was spent getting a tour of Kartchner Caverns about 40 minutes to the east. We couldn’t take pictures but highlights included “Cave Bacon”, the footprints from the two men that discovered the caves in the 1970s, and the 6-story column in the Throne Room. Highly recommend going!) We spent about 3 hours at East Saguaro. We started with a stop at the Rincon Visitor Center and then drove the Cactus Forest loop clockwise. Mica View was our longest stop – we hiked and explored quite a bit. After that, we just made short stops for photos when the view struck us. It didn’t feel as impressive as West Saguaro where the cactus were more dense so we would suggest prioritizing West Saguaro if you might only go to one.
I haven’t been very verbose describing our visit to Saguaro National Park but it truly is an amazing setting that is worth going out of your way to experience!