March 2018

The Sonoran Desert, home to the Saguaro National Park, is the only place in the world that you can see the amazing saguaro cactus. Saguaros grow very slowly at first, an inch or so per year during their first 6 to 8 years. It may be 70 years before they grow to be 7′ tall and sprout their first branches, or arms. They reach 40-50 feet by age 150! It was so amazing to see the cactus forest and know that they are all so old.

We spent two days in the park, one on the west side and one on the east. On the west side we began by visiting the Red Hills Visitor Center and then driving on the the Bajada Scenic Loop. This was a 5-mile unpaved loop where we stopped for a picnic lunch and took a short hike along the Valley View Overlook Trail. Then we stopped off at Signal Hill for a short hike up the path to see some petroglyphs dating back to 450- 1450 AD. I couldn’t stop taking pictures!

 

A couple of days later we visited the east region of the park. We started at the Ricon Mountain Visitor Center to get a hiking map and then proceeded to the 9-mile Cactus Forest Loop Drive.  We drove to the Loma Verde Loop trailhead. Jade, Brendan and I decided to do this 3.6 mile hike while Richard rode his bike around the Loop Drive. We had a great hike, taking the Loma Verde, Pink Hill and Squeeze Pen trails. I must say we were pretty hot and tired when we got back to the car and joined up with Richard. We went to the Javelina Picnic area and enjoyed our lunch since we had all worked up a good appetite!

This is truly a beautiful and unique national park and I would highly recommend a visit!