Pieces of the Bellota Trail are easy to see from the Molino Basin Parking Area or the Italian Spring Trailhead, but at over 20 miles for a full out and back it’s a long day to see the whole thing – so it was lucky to find a friend interested in doing a car swap/key exchange allowing me to make the rather beautiful trip out of the Santa Catalina Mountains over to Redington Road with a casual start, relaxed pace and plenty of time to enjoy the journey!
With (seasonal) water and fast/easy access to interesting destinations Sabino Canyon is an easy choice for night photography. You won’t escape the glow of the city here – if your only goal stunning images of the stars and Milky Way there are better destinations. But we have never failed to find something interesting to photograph and visiting Sabino Canyon at night is a chance to enjoy the canyon without the crowds – an increasingly rare treat!
The Brittlebush has lined the Pontatoc Canyon Trail with yellow flowers filling the gaps between all the other flowers – it has been fun this year to make enough visits to the lower part of the trail to see the wildflower season start/grow/explode along the trail!
The picture is unremarkable – rolling hills stretching towards the east side of the Santa Catalina Mountains on an overcast day – the remarkable thing is not the picture, but when and where it was taken… On a Friday in Oracle State Park!
Oracle State Park was, sadly, closed in 2009 due to budget cuts. It was re-opened in 2012 on weekends and this March finally re-opened full-time to the public.
I am very glad that the park is now open on weekdays – the north and east side of the Santa Catalina Mountians can be surprisingly different from the more often visited south and west sides and Oracle State Park’s compact network of trails is one of the easiest ways to visit this landscape!
I am constantly amazed how much there is to see on the Linda Vista Trails – it is easy to focus on the noise and proximity to town, but if nothing else the views make the Linda Vista Trailhead a worthy destination…
