One Day at Saguaro National Park (West) 🌵 | Hiking Wasson Peak, Valley View Overlook, & more!

Welcome to Saguaro National Park, which is named after the two million saguaro cacti that it was created to protect. The park is located in Tucson, Arizona and is home to two separate sections, the Rincon Mountain District east of Tucson, which has older and taller saguaros, and the Tucson Mountain District west of Tucson, which has a higher concentration of saguaros and is the part we'll be exploring today. So we've actually been to the park once before back in early 2019, but it was a super short visit, so we're excited to properly explore the park this time. And first up we're hiking up Wasson Peak, which is about an eight mile hike and takes you to the highest point on the west side of the park. There are a couple different trails you can take to get to the top, but we're hiking up King Canyon and then down Hue Norris to make one big loop. Bye guys, stay safe! So I've got some fun and interesting facts for you about saguaro cacti. The saguaro cactus is the nation's largest cacti and can be found in southern Arizona as well as Sonora, Mexico. The tallest saguaro ever recorded was 78 feet tall and unfortunately it fell in 1986. They can grow to be 40 to 60 feet tall on average and live up to 150 to 200 years old, but they are a very slow growing cacti. A 10 year old could only be one and a half inches. The inside is made of wooden ribs and the outside is the green fleshy skin that absorbs and stores water. After it dies, the woody ribs can be used to build roofs, furniture, or fences. And that is your edge of cactation for the day. All right, we're about 2.4 miles in. We're getting really close to the top. The hike has been a pretty gradual climb so far. You have views the entire time and we've just made a turn to get to the summit. It looks like it's just straight up the rest of the way. Having Mount Elbert flashbacks, we got got again by the false summit. That's the one we thought we were going to, but Wasson Peak is actually go along this ridge to that one there. Oh my god, it's so windy. Can't even walk. We made it. We made it. Well, we made it to the top and it was so brutal. It was so windy. It's the kind of wind that makes your eyes water and then your eye like you start to like burn in the corners of your eye. Your nose is running. Can't breathe. It's just too much air too fast. Oh my god. It was uncomfortable up there. It was very, very beautiful. The whole hike has been beautiful, but that wind was not fun. We got up there, tried to get a few shots, but we couldn't stand still. We were getting pushed and we're like, let's get the heck out of here. Luckily, the way up and back down, you can get a lot of the same views. Of course, it's a little higher, but yeah, it was just crazy. We just about made it back to the van and the hike was just under eight miles like we thought it would be and it took us about four hours exactly. Besides the crazy wind, this was an awesome hike and such a great way to see tons of saguaros, but also tons of mountain views. It really just kind of combines the best of all the awesome scenery here in Tucson into one hike. We just made a quick pit stop at the visitor center to get our patch. On our last visit here, we weren't able to get it, but it's about lunchtime now and we didn't want to leave the park for lunch, so we're using the park as inspiration for our lunch. Alright, for lunch, we are making cactus tacos. We bought this jar of nopalitos, which is cactus. We're combining it with some jalapenos, some corn, we're gonna put some black beans in there, saute it up, make it taste real good, put it on some tortillas. It should be pretty tasty. That is just a world of flavors in there. There's just so much going on. The corn and the beans give it a hearty bite, the salsas give it a tang, creaminess from the avocado and cheese. Those are spectacular. Dang it, it was better in my head. Spectacular. Okay, they're spectacular. They're really good and when we were researching kind of what to make with cactus, we had read that some people compare it to like a green bean in terms of texture, just to give you an idea of kind of what it's like. It definitely doesn't have like an overpowering taste. It's more just like an extra texture in there. We've had it before and it's really, really good, especially in this taco. Similar to most national parks, dogs are not allowed on many trails here at Saguaro, but they are allowed on a couple, including the Desert Discovery Nature Trail, which is a 0.4 mile paved loop, so we're gonna take Kona on a little walk. This is my favorite saguaro so far. He's like... Did I get it? You got it, perfect. One popular thing to do on the west side is the Bahada Loop Drive. It's a six mile gravel loop road made up of Hohokam and Golden Gate Roads. Along the way, there's different trails and sites to see and one good thing to know about this loop is that the second half of Hohokam Road is one way, so to avoid doing any backtracking, you'll need to do it in counterclockwise direction. We just made a stop at the Signal Hill Picnic Area and this happens to be the largest petroglyph site on the west side of the park with over 200 Native American petroglyphs to check out. For our next and final stop in the park, we're at the Valley View Overlook Trail, which is a 0.8 mile trail and it's actually located on the Bahada Loop as well, but more towards the beginning. It has a really small parking lot and it was full the first time we went around, so we did the loop again. We got a spot and we're gonna try to stay here until sunset. We're hoping it'll be a really nice one. It's a super clear day. So I've been wondering all day, why do some of the saguaros have arms or I guess technically they're called branches and some have no arms or no branches at all? And so thankfully we've had cell service most of our time in the park and I was able to google it and I learned that between the ages of 50 to 70 years old is when the saguaros will start to grow their branches and depending on the precipitation, it can take up to 100 years for them to grow their branches and this is actually the stage of the saguaro's life that's the greatest growth for them. Well that's gonna do it for our time here in Tucson this time. While we've been here before and done a few things, it was really fun to be here for a little over a week and explore it properly and next up we are heading about two hours northwest to Phoenix for what should be a beautiful backpacking adventure. Saw all these cactus lying around, might as well eat one. Cacti. Oh. Cacti. Whoops. We saw them cactuses. All those cactuses everywhere. Figured we might as well eat one. That picnic area is just so sus. Fantastic. Is that what the kids say these days? I don't know. We're both really loving our looks today. I've got this uh bonnet look going on. Little Adam on the prairie. Yeah. Little Adam and the saguaros.