WINTER TIME IN SABINO CANYON

One of the things I love about living in Tucson is that people like to come visit us here and enjoy the desert with us.  Recently we were lucky to have a visit from brother Larry and sister-in-law Carolyn.  They were escaping a cold snap in the Pacific Northwest - the lake they live on had frozen over for the first time in 17 years.  Tucson was also having a cold snap and lots of rain.  We had a day between rain storms and decided to go to Sabino Canyon which is a lovely riparian area in the northeastern part of Tucson, worlds away from city life.  Sabino Canyon is located in the Santa Catalina Mountains in the Coronado National Forest. Once in the park you can hike up the canyon on one of numerous trails, or you can take the tram.  We chose the tram because the driver narrates all the way up the canyon telling everything from historical tidbits to biological facts. 

Any visitor to the Tucson area expects to see Saguaro Cactus, and they are not disappointed at Sabino Canyon.

However, deciduous trees are scarce in Tucson but plentiful in the Canyon.

Our area had so much rain that nearly every bridge the tram crossed had water coursing over it.  This made our trip fairly exciting.

I was fascinated by all the textures in the rushing water.

Here you can see that it was a typically sunny (but cool) Sonoran Desert day. 

I never get tired of the Saguaro Cactus.  They don't get "arms" until they are 50-100 years old!

It sounds funny to most people, but it is exciting to see a river with water in it.  We have several rivers in Tucson which only have water in the monsoon.  Sabino Creek has water year round.

Once you reach the top of the canyon, you can ride the tram back down, or get off and walk at different stops.  Since there was water over most of the bridges, we chose to walk between the only two stops where the bridges were dry.  Here is our group - my brother-in-law Frank Odgen, sister Carol Ogden, brother Larry Watson and sister-in-law Carolyn Watson. 

Note how copper-colored the creek is.  This is from tannins leeched from fallen leaves.

A lovely winter day.  In a few more months I'd like to go back to see the wildflowers bloom.

Fall colors, even though it is January.

A "head" stone.

One last look at the rushing waters of the creek. 



Our guide said that the week before they had seen big horn sheep near this part of the canyon but we were not so lucky.  Still, it was an exciting day with the swollen creek and a lovely winter outing.

Audrey