Tucson: “Wintering” in Southern Arizona, Part 1

As part of our retirement planning, we needed to figure out what we wanted to do during the winter months. I do not like the cold. I’m one of those people who grew up in LA and always complained when the weather got “bad,” meaning below 60 degrees, days of rain, etc, etc. Although Craig is much more cold-tolerant than I am, our activity goals these days include so much outside time, that living in places with “normal” winters didn’t seem right for us. We also didn’t want to go the easy route and stay in California this winter, since we are supposed to be exploring. Solution: let’s try Southern Arizona! The average weather in Tucson in December/January is highs in the high 60s and lows around 40 degrees. And they normally get an average of 3 days of rain in each of those months. In Phoenix, January/February highs are around 70 degrees, with lows in the mid 40s. We lucked out - it was even nicer than that this year.

Some of the views were spectacular.

First coffee on our patio.

Pretty mountains.

We spent all of December and half of January in Tucson, and I have to say, we loved it. We were not sure what to expect from the desert climate, but there was a lot of interesting flora - particularly lots of interesting saguaros and other cacti. I didn’t realize that saguaros are only found in the Sonoran Desert, which covers parts of California, Arizona, and Mexico (Baja and Sonora). Craig didn’t realize that saguaros really do look like they did in cartoons from our childhood. Here’s how he cartoonized one that we saw (LOL):

Fun Fact: Saguaros don’t start sprouting “arms” until they are at least 75 years old (WHAT?!?!?!).

We were able to hike or otherwise spend time outside most of the time in Tucson - much of it because our Airbnb was conveniently close to the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, which has a variety of great trails, and sits up against the Coronado National Forest and the Pusch wilderness. The hiking was fantastic (last couple of photos from Saguaro National Park - East):

See lots more about the hiking and cacti in this post - I took a lot of photos because the area was just so interesting.

While we didn’t have a lot of rain while we were there, we kept seeing signs and warnings about flash floods. We were skeptical, but then we had 2 days of rain that I would call steady, but not hard, and the changes to the stream running through the recreation area were shocking. Early in our trip, we had easily crossed this stream to get to a mountain trail - the day after the rains, it was a rushing river (see the first two photos below). You can also see that a paved path in one area was flooding and the flow under the bridge was surging (it had been a light stream the day before the rains).

And, speaking of cartoons, I expected to find a coyote under this rock, which fell off the mountain after the rainstorm (Craig included for scale 😁).

There was also lots to do in the Tucson area as a whole. We had a great time in their downtown area for New Years Eve (when was the last time we actually went out to celebrate?!?). Our original plan was to party hop - there was a street party where they had music, food and were going to drop a taco (!) at midnight. Unfortunately, it was raining quite a bit, so we took an obligatory selfie with the taco, then hung out at a bar until it was time for the other party - held at the haunted Hotel Congress (yes, really - their other claim to fame is that the John Dilinger gang hid there and Diliger was captured after a fire broke out at the hotel).

They hoisted the Taco up using a crane before dropping it at midnight, but before that, selfies!

Indoor/outdoor bar, with just enough cover to avoid the rain.

I have no idea why they had a T-Rex, but I approve.

U of Arizona Mirror Lab:

We have finally checked off one of those post-retirement things that we’ve been talking about and not getting to - we went to a lecture/tour at University of Arizona. We HIGHLY recommend the tour of their Mirror Lab - my photos did not do it justice, so check out their website if you are interested (thanks to Mike B for pointing us to it!). In short, they are the ones who enable the use of terrestrial based space telescopes because they make the largest (and cheapest) mirrors using a their proprietary spincast process to make honeycomb shaped mirrors. Using adaptive optics, they can capture images three times better than Hubble, even though they are “looking” through Earth’s atmosphere. The Giant Magellan tellescope will be made of seven of their 8 meter mirrors. One of the folks on my tour asked if there was a reason their max size is 8 meters. The answer: that’s what fits under the 10 freeway overpass that the truck has to use to take each mirror to the LA port, where the mirror can be shipped anywhere else. It was a blast to learn about it and see the lab first hand.

Sky Islands:

We also learned that Arizona has some unique high elevation forested habitats in the mountains between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madres. The Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson has one of these sky islands - Mt Lemmon (elevation of 9,170 ft), where you can find pine and oak forests and associated flora/fauna, which of course cannot be found in the desert climate below. We took a trip up the scenic byway and it did not disappoint:

(Did you notice the crazy lady who crawled out to the ledge in the middle photo? She had to climb over a fence to get there. Was she doing yoga? Peering over the edge? No one will ever know.)

We also spent time in Saguaro National Park - interestingly, it is split between a Western part and an Eastern Part, with the majority of Tucson in between. Photos from hiking in the Eastern part of the National Park are in the Rockstars post, and there’s a very cool zoo in the Wetern part (cactus photos from their garden also in the Rockstars post). There were a lot more animals than I’ve included in the photos below, but we really enjoyed the reptiles and cacti most. (Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum)

View from one of the trails. So pretty.

A Gila Monster - you can’t see the glass, but it was safe for us to be this close!

A wild lizard that likes to hang out in the zoo! One of the docents told us about them.

So many pretty snakes, and they were more active than we usually see.

All coiled up! A Mexican Boa - I had not heard of them before.

This is a Madrean Alligator Lizard - another new one to us.

What interesting colors!

We also really enjoyed the cactus garden - check out the Rock Stars and Cacti post for more.

YIKES! (Yes, that’s a tarantula and is as big as it appears)

We’ll definitely be back. Check out Part 2 - Phoenix!