Tucson

If you haven't been to Tucson in a while, you are missing out. It's such a fun, funky town, and it moves at a totally different pace than the big cities. It's a great escape for us, and perfect for a 2 night stay, which we did the weekend before Thanksgiving. Watching sports at the U of A campus is usually what draws us there in the first place, but there are so many other things about Tucson that we enjoy. After the game- which was a heartbreaking loss to the Oregon State Beavers on a last minute field goal- we spent a couple days just enjoying the city.

We hiked at Sabino Canyon, which is really breathtaking. It's a national forest park and one of the most interesting ones at that. It's situated within the city of Tucson, unlike most parks you don't have to drive away from the city to get to it. It's a canyon, but instead of viewing it from the top down like the Grand Canyon, you walk in at the floor level and enjoy it from the bottom up.Arizona's national flower is the saguaro flower, but the saguaros aren't as prevalent throughout the state as they once were. These beautiful cacti are the iconic versions of the ones in westerns and cartoons- super green and huge, towering over the other desert flora.
Even though we were warned of mountain lion sightings, we braved the canyon to these spectacular views. We didn't really see any scary animals, luckily, but we did see a few deer relaxing in the shade. I think they picked a good spot to live!

We also checked out the house where Chris lived while going to school there. He and his mom, brother and sister fixed up this super cute house in the Sam Hughes neighborhood near the University. It still looks great, and the landscaping is thriving!

Finally, our trip would not be complete without a trip (or two) to my favorite, Beyond Bread. I got a good roll of the eyes when he spied me taking the camera in with me, so I didn't take as many pictures as I might have otherwise, but I think I picked a good subject for these two photos... would you agree??

Now that is a dessert!