Another Sunny Day in Arizona

Usually, when you’re on vacation, you’ve got to stick to a schedule. You have to move on to get to that next reservation, even if you haven’t fully explored your current location. I’ve always hated this. One of our biggest luxuries now is having the ability to stay in an area until we’ve really, truly explored it to our hearts’ content – until we’re sick of it. So after jetting to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, we headed back down to Catalina Park, outside Tucson. There’s something about the Santa Catalina Mountains that draws me in and makes me want to stay, and I just wasn’t done with them yet.

The park is adjacent to the Coronado National Forest, which encompasses the entire mountain range (along with lots of other land in SE AZ — apparently they got tired of making up new names). The area is covered with well-maintained and well-utilized trails that take you back into the wilderness for views of lush canyons and jagged peaks. My only issue with the trails is that there’s just not enough of them.

And have I mentioned the sun? Sigh…it’s so warm. And then there’s the drive to the top of the highest mountain in the area, Mt. Lemmon, but that’s the stuff of another post. In the meantime, I can’t help myself…I’ve got to share a few more random AZ pics…