Arizona Adventures

Mark and I took and awesome trip to Arizona for an ultra that we were running. We decided to bust out a couple National Parks while we were there.  

Saguaro National Park:

We went to Saguaro National Park the first day we were there. It was really cool! It's so fun to visit places with such different landscapes and scenery than we are used to. We did some hiking to loosen up our legs for our race the next day. Our first hike was the longest, and allowed us to see most of this section of the park. We hiked up Wasson Peak, and loved it. It was an 8 mile loop on a fun trail that allowed us to see most of the surrounding area. 

We love visiting national parks!

This cool house was at the beginning of the Wasson Peak trail.

Fun trail!

We had perfect weather! It was so nice to be able to wear shorts again. This picture was taken when we were almost at the top of the peak.

Almost there! The surrounding area was so pretty!

The top of the mountain!

We had a great cloud day!

A windy selfie at the top.

The trail on the way back down.

We went to the visitor's center, drove the Bajada Loop, and did two more really short hikes. We hiked the Valley View Overlook Trail, and the Signal Hill Trail. At the send of the Signal Hill Trail, there were lots of petroglyphs.

Some of the Petroplyphs.

This one was cool!

Petroglyph animals.

There were tons of them in this area.

Our plan was to finish the Tucson Mountain District of the park, and then drive an hour and a half to the Rincon Mountain District. Once we realized we were right by the Sonora Desert Museum, we decided to go there instead. We'll go back for another visit and do the other section of the park.

Sonora Desert Museum: 

We loved the desert museum! While we were hiking, I kept saying I wanted to see a mountain lion and a javelina. One of the main reasons we decided to go to the museum is because they had both! So many cool exhibits and desert animals.

Javelinas wearing masks.

They had lots of aquariums, and these little guys were pretty interesting.

We saw our fill of snakes!

The mountain lion was really active while we were there.

Look how hidden he is in his den. I wonder how many of these Mark and I have run by that we haven't seen, but that have seen us. 😱 We see their tracks quite often, but we haven't had any encounters with one yet.

Coyote

Yay! There were tons of javelinas.

Bobcat

This snake was huge!

Big horn sheep

The cactus garden.

Wolf

We made a good call by going here instead of the other half of the park. We are planning a return trip to visit Tombstone and the other half of the park that we didn't get to. It was a great day!

Pemberton 50k:

The reason we went to Arizona was to run the Pemberton 50k. February is the perfect time to leave the snow and cold of Idaho, and we thought AZ would be the perfect place to do a race. We were right! We had beautiful weather, a great trail, an amazing sunrise, and pretty big PRs. Not a bad way to spend the day.

Getting ready to start!

Arizona put on quite a show in the morning!

Such a fun area to run!

The course was two 15.3 mile loops.

Mark finishing!

Results:

Tricia- 5:05:39

Mark- 5:28:10

Petrified Forest National Park:

The day after our race, we drove quite far to get to Petrified Forest National Park. We weren't expecting snow and cold temps! Luckily we had brought gloves and light jackets just in case. We really liked this park. It's kind of broken up into 3 sections. The petrified wood is mostly in the lower section, the blue mesa is in the middle, and the painted desert is at the top. We loved it all.

Entrance sign!

We spent a few minutes in the visitor's center, and then combined a couple trails. First we did the Giant Logs trail. This short hike has 'Old Faithful', which is a. huge petrified tree. It is 10 feet wide at the base. Then we crossed the parking lot and did the Long Logs and Agate House trails. The agate house was an eight room pueblo built 700 years ago.

Lots of petrified wood!

It's so crazy, because it looks just like normal wood until you touch it. It feels just like stone.

Old Faithful

We thought we left the snow hikes in Idaho! It didn't take long to melt off.

The window of the agate house. The entrance was through the roof.

A view of the inside. The ladder is for the rood entrance.

Agate house

We drove up the road a little ways and walked the Crystal Forest path. There is lots of petrified wood, and it has crystal deposits in it.

Wood from the Crystal Forest.

More wood from the Crystal Forest.

In the middle of the park is the Blue Mesa. I loved this section! It looks like the Badlands, but is tinted blue because of the bentonite. We took a cool hike down into the canyon.

The edge of the Blue Mesa.

The color was really cool. 

There were sections where the ground would start eroding, and then more petrified wood would just appear from under the dirt.

A view from the top of the mesa.

So pretty.

We drove the whole park road and made lots of stops along the way at all the viewpoints and historical sites. We hiked around the remains of Puerco Pueblo, which was a 100 room pueblo from 600 years ago. There were tons of petroglyphs around the pueblo site.

This is the remains of the pueblo. You can't tell from the picture, but it was huge. 

Some of the petroglyphs around the pueblo site.

More petroglyphs.

I love the bird eating the frog.

A section of Route 66 goes through the park, and they have it marked with a 1932 studebaker.

Route 66

Route 66

1932 studebaker

The top part of the park is called the painted desert, and there is no question how it got it's name. So pretty!

The painted desert!

They have an old Inn on the rim of the painted desert. It was closed due to COVID, but a really cool building.

The painted desert looked like it stretched on forever.

This trip accomplished a lot for us. We can now cross off our AZ ultra, and we have also completed all the national parks in Arizona. So fun!

We spent the time in between these adventures hanging out with family. It's fun that everyone lives there, so we could get caught up on everyone's lives. I can't believe I didn't get a single picture of all of us together. We'll be back soon though. Arizona is a fun place to explore!