The Saguaro National Park is a bit unusual because it is actually divided into two sections. I was pretty curious as to how this happened and after some research discovered that the west area was made into a National Monument in 1933 and was changed to a National Park in 1994. In 1994 the East section was added to the National Park through generous land donations.
Although you can see both in one day, we chose to visit them on separate days and that is how I will write the posts. We chose to visit the Rincon Mountain portion of the park first (for no better reason than it was closer to where we were staying) which is commonly referred to as the East section.
We decided to take Jack in the hope he could get some exercise and I was pleasantly surprised at how dog friendly this portion of the park is. As always we started with the visitors center and got a hiking map from the rangers. We are not big hikers in general but I always like to see the hikes available. The visitors center was on the small side but had a great gift shop and I really like the display about what the inside of a Saguaro looks like. Plus it’s amazing to see how old the tall ones are.
This park has a nice paved 8 mile road, which doesn’t sound like a lot but we drove slow and stopped along the way so it took us a couple of hours to complete. I also highly recommend going down any side roads you can in these smaller parks because those areas are more dog friendly and give additional opportunities to get out and walk around. Jack was on high alert every time we took a little walk and it was obvious he was smelling lots of critters.
Saguaros are frankly amazing and seeing a forest of them was really impressive, especially when you realize they only exist in the Sonoran desert, The Mexican state of Sonora, the Whipple Mountains, and Imperial County, CA. They are finicky growers and rarely go above 4,000 feet but also need water to grow. They don’t actually get their first arm until around 75 years old and commonly live to be 150. I absolutely love them and my personal favorite are the kids with arms around the middle. Every single one is completely unique though and it’s easy to see that in the National Park. Here are a couple of my favorites I saw.
My absolute favorite part of the whole park though is at the very end of the road. The javelina rocks are a gorgeous rock formation and there is a place to park and walk around. The combination of rocks and cacti is very beautiful to me and I really loved this area.
It was a really beautiful day and Jack didn’t get one sticker in his paw the entire time. And best of all although it was busy, it rarely felt crowded and we really got to commune with nature. Next up the West side.
We very much appreciate your support of our blog.
Camper Chronicles 