We arrived at thee campground in Tucson a bit later than we thought. The road we were going to take from I10 to the campground was closed. Had to drive into Tucson(all interstate) and take the long way around. The main road to the campground is 4 miles of riding a roller coaster. Many dips, big dips. I am pretty sure we bottomed out once. Road looks a little beat up from hitches hitting the road.

The campground is in the Tucson Mountain Park and is county run. These are the type of parks we like to stay in. Since the park was mostly empty we had a great choice of sites. We were careful about our orientation so the sun wouldn't shine in our front window all afternoon. First site we couldn't get very level so we found another site. We settled in and did a drive around the park and a walk around our loop.  Government run campgrounds are generally set up in loops of about 50 sites each, your  neighbor is about 50' or further away. Many times you can't even see them.

This is a beautiful location in the desert, surrounded by mountains and great views.

We were scheduled to go to Kitt Peak for a night astronomy tour so we took it easy today. Toured Saguaro West National Park. We stopped in the visitor center to watch the movie. Movie was very good as usual and the ending was awesome. The screen went up, the curtains opened and we had a phenomenal view of the desert and the Saguaro.

View after the curtain rose

We had been to Saguaro East many years ago and had never heard of Saguaro West. This entire area is very scenic. When talking to the Ranger, who is from Tucson, he admitted he had never heard of Saguaro West either until he went to work for NPS. We had a good laugh.

We have never seen so many Saguaro in one place. Well deserved National Park.  The Saguaro have started to bloom, they need to be 8' tall and 30-60 years old. In about 2-3 weeks the entire desert will be in bloom. We are at 2700'. I would consider this a forest of Saguaro.

Saguaro forest

Almost looks like a person

The cacti are beginning to bloom

A Saguaro in bloom

We did the road tour of Saguaro, mostly dirt roads. If I don't have a daily dose of 10-20 miles of dirt road I am disappointed. We normally pack our lunch but for some reason we forgot to do that today. Big mistake. In our wanderings after seeing the park, we saw a Subway and picked up a sandwich. Good thing we did, never saw another place to eat in the next 2-3 hours.

The instructions when we looked up this park said not to come in over Western Gates Pass Road. We drove this road today in the Honda, I can understand the restriction easily. Up the mountain, down the mountain, lots of curves and somewhat steep.

We were looking forward to our visit to Kitt Peak(23 telescopes) this evening. Around 1 we received an email saying the program was cancelled for that night due to clouds. We called and rescheduled for the next night.