Honeybee Canyon hike

I went for a very peaceful hike today in Honeybee Canyon with friends Gregg and Pat. Honeybee Canyon is located northwest of Tucson and runs through a portion of the Rancho Vistoso housing developments. We had all been planning on checking out this area for some time, and today was the day.

Most of the hike is up a sandy shallow canyon that had a trickle of water running down it. The saguaros in this area seem very healthy and are very impressive in height, number of arms, and how they were rooted in what seemed like bare rock. This is a great area to go look at some truly beautiful saguaros!



A desert giant. Should be over 100 years old.


















Rock art about halfway up the canyon. What does it mean?

We continued up out of the canyon and hiked cross country up to a small ridge that had really nice views of Honeybee wash, Oro Valley, and the Santa Catalina mountains.








On the drive back through Rancho Vistoso we saw a number of interesting roadside creatures and pulled over to check out a variety of tortoise, lizard, and other decorative "road art". This desert tortoise was about 4-5 feet long. Pretty cool.

All in all a very nice day for a day that started out below freezing and later climbed into the 60s. Still a good time of year to be checking out the lowland desert while its cool and fewer concerns about snakes when going cross country. The mountains surrounding Tucson have snow and the ski area an hour from Tucson is open for business. I'm enjoying the lowlands a lot for now, but I'm also looking forward to warmer weather to head back up into the trails in the pines. Its all good.

[P.S. while hiking cross country we stumbled across the campaign trail... check out separate post. *smile*]