This campground in Tucson Mountain Park was
recommended by hiking friend Janet who might have been able to meet us there
with her husband. However they did not make it into Arizona. We are grateful to
Janet because this has to be one of the most peaceful “anchorages”. We decided
to stay three days. It is a regional campsite run by the Pima County (unlike US
State and Federal parks). The Tucson Mountain Park includes the well-known
Desert Museum, which we have now visited twice. It also includes the “Old
Tucson” movie site where many westerns have been filmed. The history of the
park is impressive and goes back to founding visionaries such as CB Brown who
wrote “ Here are limitless views of desert vegetation strange giant cacti
forms, rock formations uprising sharply into forms and craggy peaks almost
unreal to strangers and ever fascinating in the changing flood of desert
light……..” “ on April 11th
1929, not quite seven months before the stock market crash that plunged the
world into the Great Depression, 29,988 acres were withdrawn from mining and
established, by a vote of Pima County’s three-member Board of Supervisors as
Tucson Mountain Park.”
We have enjoyed a peaceful “anchorage”
here, great sunsets and we have continued to become more observant birders. The
following species we have identified in the park – Cactus Wren, Pyrrholoxia,
Broad-billed Hummingbird, Anna’s Hummingbird, Gambel’s Quail, Ladder- backed Woodpecker,
Northern Flicker, and a Curve-billed Thrasher. We have also seen several
Cayote’s wandering in the desert.
There is great hiking through multiple
types of desert cacti and I managed a 7.8 KM, 255 meter climb hike on the Brown
Mountain Trail that starts near the campground.
As an extra treat last evening the local star
gazers who had brought their telescopes showed us the stars – it was a bit
limited by there being a full moon.
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