Al's travels: 2 weeks in AZ

I made it to Tucson early that afternoon where I noisily announced my arrival as I got to Marks place. You see, I'd been hauling my bicycle on top of my car and totally forgot about it as I pulled into Marks yard under the low hanging tree. I wondered what all the racket was and why all this stuff was falling on my windshield. I figured it out about the time a large limb snapped off and fell on my car. Mark came out laughing and thanking me because trimming the tree was on his to do list. The bike looked kind of odd sitting at a 45 degree angle with a large limb stuck in it, but everything looked none the worse for wear so we went out for a hike to Sabino and Rattlesnake canyons where we dodged the rain but still got in a nice hike. I didn't take any pictures of Sabino that evening but a couple days later I woke up early and went back to Sabino and continued on to Bear Canyon to the seven falls where I took some shots.

Here's a shot from Sabino with some clouds still lingering on the mountain tops as well as some good flow over the dam

Most of the pics from the seven falls didn't turn out that well. There was a boy scout troop or something like that all around the falls so I didn't go to where I could have gotten the best shots so they could have the run of the place. This pic of the upper falls section and mountain didn't turn out too bad though-

All this is about 15 minutes away from Marks house in Tucson.

I thought it was only going to be a 4-5 mile hike and was surprised when it turned out to be a 8 mile hike round trip. Not too bad but I wasn't really prepared for it and would have left some gear behind if I'd known. I was kinda pooped when I got back to Mark's; he was happy to hear that so he decided to finish me off with a bicycle ride in the Saguaro national park.

Of course I couldn't go to Saguaro national park without including a shot of an actual Saguaro.

We hopped off our bikes part way through the ride for a quick hike to the lime falls. Here's Mark resting up for the strenuous hike-

As we approached the falls (which were dry) we were lucky enough to scare up a pair of owls that flew off and landed on a cactus a little ways off to watch us. We gazed up in awe at the Lime Falls and decided to start our ascent up the rocky precipice where we would take a well deserved break to eat some lunch. I didn't pack the DSLR on the bikes so that left me with only my Fuji F30 P&S camera. I scoffed at the video feature when I first got it but I've used it a handful of times and have found it handy to have and pretty fun; this was one such occasion. Click the picture below to see a video of Mark and his grand ascent up Lime Falls, complete with him showering himself with accolades on his achievement (hope you can handle a couple naughty words).

I don't know if he was aware I was actually taking a video or not.

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