My brother and his wife visited over the weekend. They live in Chesapeake, Virginia. Like us, they’re both retired. They made sort of a last-minute decision to visit Las Vegas for a few weeks. Since Las Vegas is relatively close to Tucson — it’s “only” about a seven-hour drive — they reached out to see if we’d be around. Lucky for us, we had no plans and were available for a fun weekend visit.
We spent time visiting, played a lot of games, and did fun touristy stuff while they were here.
First, we took a quick trip to Saguaro National Park. That park is a bit unique in that it has two separate sections, one on either side of the city of Tucson. There’s the western Tucson Mountain District, which we did not have time to visit, and the eastern Rincon Mountain District. The eastern part of the park is very close to where we live and it has a nice, paved, eight-mile driving loop, which makes for a very easy way to get up close to the majestic saguaros as well as other desert vegetation.
From there, we headed over to Sabino Canyon Recreation Area in the Coronado National Forest. That’s where Sharen captured the selfie of the four of us on the Sabino Canyon Crawler, the emission-free electric shuttle that ferries folks 3.7 miles up the canyon.
From there, we drove up the Catalina Highway, also known as the Mount Lemmon Highway or General Hitchcock Highway, a scenic, 27-mile paved road northeast of Tucson that climbs Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains. The drive ends near the summit of Mount Lemmon (approximately 9,200 feet in elevation) and is popular for its changing scenery, transitioning from the Sonoran Desert to a Canadian-like pine forest. We even got to see a little bit of snow!
It’s always fun having people visit. This visit was extra special because we haven’t seen much of each other over the past several years or more.
We are already looking forward to the next visit when we can spend more time together.