Tucson, Arizona: Sabino Canyon.

Earl and I decided to get a bit of exercise today and visit Sabino Canyon outside of Tucson. Nature’s beauty is breaktakingly wonderful in these parts. Sabino Canyon is a wonderful place to do some hiking and just enjoy the outdoors.

There is a tram that will take you into the canyon, with nine places to exit or get back on along the way. The tram runs a little less than four miles into the canyon, climbing about 700 feet during it’s journey to the far end.

We exited at tram stop number nine, the furthest the tram would go, and decided that we would walk back to the visitor’s center. Did we opt to walk along the paved path? Of course not. We took a look at the map and saw the “Phoneline Trail”, which followed the ridge of the canyon about 600 feet higher than the paved road. It looked to be just a small challenge at just under 3.2 miles.

Mother Nature can be so witty.

The trail ended up being over 5 1/2 miles, as the 3.2 mile marker was just at a convenient place to exit the trail. The path was a small dirt path that winded it’s way along the canyon, about two-thirds of the way up the canyon wall. There were beautiful cacti in bloom. There were little reptilian things running around. There were warnings of mountain lions becoming more aggressive towards humans, but we didn’t see any of those. Armed with a bottle of water and a camera each, we made our way along the canyon wall and across the patch of desert between the canyon and the visitor’s center. Come to find out it was 95 degrees when we got back to the Jeep.

“But it’s a dry heat.”, my favorite quote of the day.

We both survived the hike just fine and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. After lunch at BJ’s Brewery Restaurant (pics on the moblog) we headed to Phoenix.