On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
frosty
We visited both the east and west sections of the park; the pictures below are from the west side. We arrived at Catalina State Park near Tucson at the end of March, as things were shutting down. The good news was that Saguaro’s park roads and trails were open. The bad news – all facilities closed, this time including rest rooms, and surprisingly, pit toilets at scattered picnic areas. We spent half a day in the western half of this park, which is split into two sections with Tucson in between. We drove the Bajada Scenic Loop and walked a couple of short trails, including the Signal Hill trail to a petroglyph site.
The park has the largest concentration of saguaros in the Sonora Desert, the only place they’re found. They grow slowly – 15 years to reach one foot, 75 to grow the first arm, and they typically live to 150 or 200 years.
This particular cactus was at a trailhead, I expect it’s one of the most photographed saguaros.
These were a few of the petroglyphs at the top of Signal Hill.
Petroglyphs.
This was one of the picnic shelters built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
Mary G
And Twitler had a bunch of ancient saguaros bulldozed for his bullshit wall. I am full of anger and despair today, because jackbooted stormtroopers and California idiots making us the only blue state in the list of “rapidly getting out of control of the pandemic.”
So I’m reposting this again and will listen to it several times:
Erin in Flagstaff
I love saguaros. They are fascinating. You can tell if it’s been a wet season if the cacti are plump.
As an Arizona gal, I get upset when I see a saguaro in a movie and the location is stated as Texas or California. Saguaros are in Mexico and Arizona only.
An egregious use of a prop saguaro in a movie: Forrest Gump. He’s running along a road up in the Monument Valley area. He runs by a saguaro. Hmph. Monument Valley is in the high desert, not in the Sonoran desert.
Benw
Cool cacti!
frosty
@Erin in Flagstaff:
OT, but your annoyance at saguaros in a movie scene set in Monument Valley is the same as mine in the scenes from the Deer Hunter that were supposed to be the Appalachians but were shot in the Cascades. Really????
Erin in Flagstaff
@frosty:
I bet all of us have complaints about a movie that gets it really wrong about the supposed location.
piratedan
I happen to be partial to the Western branch of the park because its closer to where I live and because of the following:
its more mountainous and offers some really good contrasting vistas
its right next to Tucson Mountain Park
its close to the Arizona/Sonora Desert Museum (one of the best in the country)
The eastern park is nestled between the Catalina and Rincon mountains
is also close to the Colossal Cave attraction
Tucson lies between the two branches of the park…
the twisted variations of the cactus are commonly referred to around here as “your cactus on drugs”…
Xavier
I’ve never spent any time at Catalina SP but Gilbert Ray campground in Tucson Mountain County Park adjacent to the western section of Saguaro NP is fabulous.
BruceJ
@frosty: It’s kind of like modern TV “All cities look supiciously like Vancouver” :-)
CCL
Makes me homesick.
But thanks for the wonderful photos.
When I was growing up, a friend of my grandmother’s out near the rincons used to grow saguaro to reforest the foothills. Even as a child I couldn’t believe I was looking at four year old saguaros that were these tiny little things.
Interstadial
Nice shots of a wonderful park.
@Erin in Flagstaff: Almost entirely. They do get across the Colorado River into the Whipple Mountains area of California near Parker, but that’s only a very small part of the California deserts. You’re right that within the U.S. they’re generally not found outside of southern AZ. But in people’s minds saguaros are like sand dunes – it’s not a desert unless you have them.
Hidalgo de Arizona
Nice pictures! One of these days I should share the photos I took on a backpacking trip into Saguaro a couple years ago – it’s one of the few places in the US where you can climb from desert to temperate pine forests over the course of a day. Those southwestern mountains are called “sky islands” quite justifiably.
eclare
Beautiful photos! What a nice way to start the day.