Our 2023 hiking featured a lot of deserts, which isn’t surprising since we moved to Tucson, AZ in January.  Besides frequenting the nearby Saguaro National Park and Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, we also took some road trips to Petrified Forest National Park (AZ), Chiricahua National Monument (AZ), and Joshua Tree National Park (CA).  All beautiful, but still mostly deserts.  I’ve reduced my blogging slightly to spare my readers cactus fatigue.

Arch in Bear Canyon, Tucson.
Mining equipment in Joshua Tree NP. The desert is “similar”.
Chiricahua National Monument is pretty different, though.

Tucson isn’t new to us.  We’ve been visiting for decades, but this year we started noticing subtle changes that are only visible with longer stays.  For example, instead of saying “the park is dry today”, we actually know that it hasn’t rained in two months.  We won’t idly wonder if a waterfall is worth visiting; we’ll have a pretty good idea how much it will be flowing (if at all).  We’ve learned which trails have shade, and when it’s a bad idea to try an overly ambitious hike.  Sometimes we’ll drive further to start from a cooler, higher elevation, both for comfort and for the different flora and fauna it provides.

Desert tortoise. Elevation about 3000′.
Black bear. Elevation about 6500′.

We’ve started hiking at night during full moons.

Night view of Tucson from Blackett’s Ridge. Foreground is red from my headlamp.

Through the Meetup.com website, we joined several hiking groups and made some new friends. We hike pretty often with Jackie Emanuele, who also contributed her Grand Canyon R2R adventure on this blog. Look for more guest contributions in the future.

I really don’t know what 2024 will be like, but it will probably also have deserts. Happy New Year!

Has to be a good omen, right?