Sabino

Today me and Big G met up for a late breakfast and a walk up Sabino Canyon. I love this place, as it is such a geological treasure, and has so many good off-road hikes, particularly the one up to Seven Falls.

Today we just walked up the road, which is finally open again. Two summers ago, there was a big flood in the canyon and it took out the road almost completely. Even last summer, it was still closed off. Walking up the road itself is pretty spectacular. The bridges and Dam were built by the CCC during the depression and from the looks of the road, it has been redone, and resurfaced many times, but the little stone bridges are still the same, except for the one wiped out in the flood of 2006!

If we had gone all the way to the top and back, it would have been 7.6 miles but we got started too late in the day, after jawin' for an hour at the cafe, and it got too hot to go the whole way, so we only went half way up, or about 4 miles round trip.

The down side, other than the sunburn I have, despite SPF 15, was that I have never seen so many people in there...it was like frickin' Disneyworld. The little tram service was running, but they had THREE of them going at a time, and they were ALL full of fat white people! I figure each tram had 60 people on it, x $8 x 3 trams and they were running twice an hour, so that is...um close to $3K an hour? I am going to go tomorrow morning at 6 am and try to make it to the top before the hordes arrive....

Bikes aren't allowed between 9 and 5 pm, to avoid accidents with pedestrians, and I am grateful. I have been here when the bikes were whizzing by like hornets! I will probably see some tomorrow.

OH, and speaking of flying insects, there was some GIGANTIC black flying thing - it looked like a tarantula with wings......

Want to read more on Sabino Canyon? Try THIS or THIS