Sabino Canyon

Sabino Canyon is just north of Tucson right at the base of Mount Lemmon. They have a recreation area there with a tram ride that goes up the canyon. The tram is kind of an open air bus that seats about 24 people and it pulls a trailer that seats about 24 more. The ride up the canyon is 3.8 miles and on the way up the driver talks about the canyon’s rock formations, vegetation and various other tidbits of information. The tickets are $6.00 each and your ticket gets you a ride all the way up and down or any shorter distance between. You can get off at any of the stops on the way up or down and walk the rest of the way or walk part way and then reboard another tram later. They run every hour from 8 AM to 4:30 PM. There are a lot of great photo opportunities if you walk, but if you plan to just ride—don’t bother taking the camera. They only stop if someone wants to get on or off, so you don’t have much time for pictures. The canyon is really very pretty. There is a creek that runs through it and there is even some water in it right now. (For those of you who don’t live in Arizona, you must understand that most of our rivers and creeks are dry most of the year. Some friends of ours visited a few years ago and they thought we must be doing some construction on one of our larger rivers because there was absolutely no water in it. They just couldn’t understand how such a huge riverbed could actually be dry. Oddly enough, since then they have built a “lake” in that riverbed. It is two miles long and has gigantic inflatable tubes at the ends which can be lowered in the unlikely event of a real flood in that river. They purchased the water to fill the “lake” from the Colorado River for several million dollars. Think about this: if we do get a flood and they lower the inflatable “dams”, all the water runs out and they have to buy more? Gary and I don’t really appreciate the whole thing, but I guess a lake in the desert is a good thing.) Back to Sabino Canyon. Here are the pictures that we took during a walk around the recreation area before the tram took off. We weren’t really in the mood for any hiking on this trip, but we will probably go back and take the tram up and walk down. We are definitely going on a moonlight ride up the canyon in December. I’m not sure how often they do the moonlight rides, but I do know that they only do them during the full moon. Otherwise, I imagine that it gets pretty dark up there.

Since we have lived in the mountains in Colorado, the mountain part was interesting, but not spellbinding. Since we have lived in the desert, we knew most of what the tour guide explained, but for anyone who is new to the desert, they give a lot of information that is interesting and useful. Our rating:

El Tour de Tucson

November 20, 1999

There is an annual bike race in Tucson called El Tour de Tucson. This year they had a record 4,318 people riding in the race. They have numerous levels of race from the 110 miler to a quarter miler for the children. The race is actually a benefit and the proceeds go to Tu Nidito (which translates roughly to “your little nest”) an agency that offers services to children with life-threatening illnesses. We rode past the cyclists several times while we were out doing errands. people looked very sleek in their fancy bicycling tights and others looked very casual in shorts and tee shirts.