Tucson, Arizona
October 26-30, 2020
We left Sedona on October 26, 2020, and headed south by taking the Red Rocks Scenic Byway one last time. We got some more photos of Bell Rock and Courthouse Vista.
We left red rock country and headed towards our next destination, Tucson. We decided to take a somewhat meandering route to avoid Phoenix area traffic, heading a bit west toward Gila Bend, where we had stayed way back in the 1980’s. The motel from that earlier trip was still there!
We had a picnic in the city park, and noted that it was very, very quiet; we were not sure if that was normal or due to COVID. The area suffered flash floods in 2021.
From Gila Bend, we took I-8 east to rejoin I-10. It was too early to check into our hotel, which was north of Tucson, so we went to take a look at the downtown area and the nearby University of Arizona. Although it was fairly quiet (COVID), we liked the downtown area with street cars and made a note to visit at a later time when things were more normal.
We headed north to our hotel located near Dove Mountain. By this time, the weather had cooled considerably, and we weren’t sure about our plans for warm weather activities (like sitting by the nice pool with a canyon view).
October 27, 2020
We woke up to find it was really cold. Like 35F cold. Brrr. We didn’t do much until it got a bit warmer.
We then drove south to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which was located in the Tucson mountains, just west of the city of Tucson.
The Museum is a combination botanic garden, natural history museum and small zoo, and we enjoyed spending a few hours walking around. The photo at the top of this page is from the garden.
Mexican Gray Wolf
We drove back toward Tucson past the “Old Tucson” studio and over Gates Pass. We got a nice view of the mountains and saguaro cacti at the lookout.
October 28, 2020
It was a little bit warmer today, so we spent our day in Saguaro National Park. The Park has two segments, one near the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum on the west side of Tucson, and the other in the foothills to the East.
We started in the western region of the park where we drove on the Bajada Loop dirt road. While there, we took walks on three short trails (Desert Discovery, Valley View Overlook and Signal Hill) and got up close views of nice cactus, as well as petroglyphs (at Signal Hill). Photos below.
After a picnic lunch, we headed to the eastern part of the park, in the foothills of the Rincon Mountains, where we took the 8 mile long Cactus Forest Drive which has several overlooks including the Mica View with a view of the peak of the same name. We had visited this portion of the park in the 1980’s, before it had attained park status. We then took another short nature hike (Freeman Homestead).
Look at all those arms!
Our last stop was Javelina Rocks before we drove about 45 minutes back to our hotel.
October 29, 2020
Today we started our drive home. We had originally planned to spend the night in Barstow to break up the drive into reasonable segments, but some dear friends recently purchased a home in Palm Springs and invited us to spend the night there, not a hard decision. It was only a small detour and much better than Barstow!
The drive to Palm Springs was about 5.5 hours, mostly along I-10, crossing the Colorado River at Blythe.
October 30, 2020
We drove home from Palm Springs, 480 miles about 7.5 hours. The total trip was just over 2,300 miles.
This was a short trip and a good introduction to traveling during COVID times. We mostly dined on take-out, hotel breakfasts were sparse, and most visitor centers (indoors) were closed or had limited areas available. Nonetheless, we enjoyed some wonderful sights and planned to do it again next year.
