Our Day in Tucson

Tucson was hot. Really, really hot. We started our morning with some eggs and coffee and headed into town for a tour of Fourth Street, the happening street in Tucson. Luckily, it was just a short walk from Dave and Uppie’s place, and we were there in no time. Our walk was accompanied by the symphonic and eventually incessant buzzing of cicada. I am accustomed to hearing them, but this was on a whole new level; perhaps just a notch under the vuvuzela infestation that has plagued the World Cup this year. Okay, they weren’t that bad, but man, were they loud!

Fourth Street was a nice stretch with some cool shops, including an everything-you-could-want-that-might-remind-you-of-the-desert-region store and a nice book store where we picked up some material for the rest of our journey. We also passed several bars, some of which we would return to later that night. One interesting observation was the number of tattoo parlors that were scattered along our little walk. Each one sounded as if business were going really well, until we realized that the buzzing wasn’t coming from inside, but from all around us – the cicadas!

Some cool BikeArt

Now, it was hot as blazes when we rolled into town the night before. Or so we thought, as we had not yet had the chance to experience what it felt like to be in Arizona when the sun was actually out. It was truly all-encompassing. Like being embraced by the heat, to paraphrase a friend of Dave’s who he told us about. To cool off, we set off for Sky Island – the aptly named peak just outside of Tucson. It turned out to be a cool, refreshing oasis with as diverse an ecosystem as what we experienced driving from California to Arizona. Before we headed up, though, we made a couple stops – one to pick up Dave’s new glasses and another to grab some grub for our little hike. The burritos we picked up at Paco’s were cheap, filling, and scrumptious.

We set off for our outdoor adventure with full bellies and hopes that Dave’s promises of a cooler climate would hold true in our near future. Climbing the mountain was a real trip – to see the expansive emptiness of the sprawling desert, with saguaro cacti being the dominant life form for as far as the eye could see. It was a completely unique experience for me to look out over the vastness while Shari expertly navigated the Mini along the road winding up to our first destination. Sure enough, the thermometer readout declined as we climbed the mountain, settling into the 80s as we pulled into a parking spot at Windy Point.

The view from Windy Point was phenomenal. Drastic desert cliffs and eroded landscape and forms were bountiful. Scrambling up rocks and mountain-goating around seemed the best way to get some of the greatest views at first. Some sights were right under our noses, however, as an array of colors of various lichens covered many sides of rocks, if such a small word can be used to describe such big pieces of… rock. Quick eyeballs spotted quick lizards, who were mostly able to escape our camera lenses. Some were captured, but those buggers sure were aware of us, and made an effort to stay clear. Dave had the surreal experience of wearing glasses for the first time in this intense landscape, and kept having to take them off to make sure of distances that he wasn’t too sure of with the new lenses! Scary!

Windy Point, panorama-style

From the sprawling desert scenery of Windy Point, we drove further along to the Butterfly Trail, where we found ourselves hiking through lush and vividly alive terrain along a path lined with wildflowers, grasses, and other plants. This clearly was what was meant by Sky Island. The remnants of burnt forest in the midst of early stages of succession provided the only reminder that we were indeed in a hot and dry part of the world.