Journeys: Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, Arizona - Hiking

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, Arizona - Hiking

Some old award miles were about to expire, so Roger and I made a last minute trip down to Tucson, Arizona for some winter sun and warmth. The primary goal of this trip was relaxing and enjoying the sunshine, but we also hiked in nearby Sabino Canyon Recreation Area to enjoy the beautiful desert scenery. Roger's friend Mike joined us for the day and we hiked to popular Seven Falls waterfall along the Bear Canyon Trail.

Cactus wren

Roger and Mike

Entering Bear Canyon

The trail followed a flowing stream after entering Bear Canyon and the desert scenery along the canyon walls was spectacular. There is nothing better than hiking in shorts and a t-shirt in February. Sabino Canyon Recreation Area is a popular place, and there were many people out on the trail despite our early departure. We arrived at Seven Falls to find even more people, but a spectacular sight of several cascading waterfalls and pools. The waterfalls were gorgeous and we spent about an hour enjoying the canyon and the warm sunshine.

Bear Canyon

Hiking to Seven Falls

Seven Falls

Seven Falls

We spent the rest of our brief Tucson trip relaxing at gorgeous pool at Loews Ventana resort and enjoying the surprisingly excellent Tucson Botanical Garden. I can't wait to get back to Tucson to explore the town and surrounding desert.

Ventana Canyon

Tucson Botanical Garden

Enjoying the winter sun

Tucson Botanical Garden

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess