Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Arizona

Read this post, before you go, if you are planning a trip or thinking about taking a trip to Tucson, Arizona to visit Saguaro National Park.

If you will be traveling in your car or RV to Saguaro, read this post Healthier Food And Snack Choices For Our Road Trips for snack ideas to take along on your drive.

Stop 5 of our 14 National Park in 5 States road trip (July-August 2025) brought us to Saguaro National Park in Arizona. We passed by the park's visitor's center on the way to the campground. We stopped in to get a map so we could get started on making plans for our time in Saguaro, which I found out is pronounced "Sah-wah-row" which sounds nothing like the way I had been pronouncing it.

Our first full day in Tucson was a Sunday so before we headed to the park we attended mass at San Xavier del Bac Mission. This beautiful Spanish Colonial style church was built in the 1700's and gets 200,000 visitors a year.

                                                                                

The building was so big on the outside that we expected to walk into a large church. We were surprised how small the actual church part of this building was. It was absolutely gorgeous but only held about 50 people maximum. We were glad we came a little early and were able to get a seat.

             

San Xavier del Bac Mission is worth a visit even if you are not in the area on a Sunday for the mass. You can tour the church and grounds and visit the small plaza that holds a couple of shops that sell crafts, souvenirs, religious articles and food.

After church we made our way to Saguaro National Park - West, Tucson Mountain District. It was a scorching 107 degrees on this day so the park rangers at the Red Hills Visitor Center were advising park goers not to go on the longer hikes.

The Valley View Trail was only 0.3 miles and gave us our first chance to get up close and personal with the saguaros. 

Saguaros are the largest cactus in the US. They grow very slowly and at 150 years old finally reach their full height. The tallest recorded saguaro was 78 feet tall.

We explored most of the park in our air-conditioned car on the unpaved 6 mile in and out scenic drive. At the 3 mile point of the drive, before the turnaround, was the Ez-King-In-Zin picnic area. We debated whether we wanted to climb the steep rock steps that lead to the picnic area at the top of the hill.

The view we had from the picnic area was well worth the climb to get to it. We were so glad we did it!

Saguaro National Park is split into two separate areas. We were conveniently camping right in between the two halves of the park and could get to both sides easily. On our last day in Tucson, we made our way to Saguaro National Park - East, Rincon Mountain District. We stopped in the Rincon Visitor Center to watch a film and learned more about the park.

We got to the park early so that we could enjoy it before it got really hot out. Most of our exploring would, once again, be from the inside of our car.

We ventured out of the car to read the interpretive signs at most of the several overlooks and to walk around one short nature trail along the 8 mile paved scenic drive loop.

We found that this side of the park was much more scenic than the east side but had a lot less saguaros.

The Saguaros we did find here were very impressive though.

We did one hike. It was the mile long Freeman Homestead Nature Trail. Most of the hike was very scenic. I realized I had left my water bottle in the car when we were well into the trail. Soko convinced me that the trail wouldn't take long to do since it was only a mile and that I would survive without my water.

We chose to do this trail because it said that we would "Wander down this path to the site of an old homestead..." and that sounded interesting and fun. When we got to the site we didn't see anything at all but after much searching, we found this little piece of foundation.

The trail just started to go downhill from here for me. The last 1/4 mile was just desert with nothing much to look at and I was dying of thirst. I began to feel like I was going to pass out and  thought that Soko would have to carry me back to the car.

I was so happy when we finally made it back to the car. After I drank a bottle of water in one gulp, I got my cooling wrap out of the cooler and wiped all the sweat of my entire body and felt much better! I highly recommend bringing a cooling wrap with you if you are planning to spend the day in a very hot desert. 

The Freeman Trail was the last stop on the scenic loop. We made it around the loop and did everything we wanted to do before it got dangerously hot out. We headed back to the campground. We had just gotten back to our trailer and were inside when we heard a loud bang and our whole RV shook. We thought for sure that an RV or car had crashed into us as they were pulling into the campground. We ran outside to check it out and didn't see any damage to our trailer. Soko saw this after he went out to investigate.

Luckily no one was hurt in the house where someone's gas oven exploded. 

We literally went out with a bang in Tucson, AZ lol!

                                              

Read these posts about other amazing National Parks.

Petrified Forest National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park

Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks

Have you been to Saguaro National Park? Is it one of your favorites or is your favorite one of the other 63 National Parks? We would love to hear from you in comments.

Cruising: A Budget Friendly Vacation

Have you've been thinking you would like to go on a cruise but couldn't afford it? Cruising can be a budget friendly vacation as you will find out out when you read this post.

If you are planning to travel to Europe on your cruise read our post, Packing For Our 12 Day Mediterranean Cruise, before you start packing.

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This post was originally written in February, 2018. We just got back from a cruise and I am happy to say that cruising is still a budget friendly vacation. Look for updated (October, 2025*) information throughout this post.

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I can't believe we have been retired for 2 1/2 years now.  I have to say that we are enjoying every minute of it.  One reason we are so happy with our new life is that our dream of traveling, when we retired, is really coming true.   Since retiring, we have made several quick road trips that brought us to Washington, DC, Charleston, SC, Gatlinburg, TN and Cherokee, NC.  We enjoyed a vacation in Cancun, Mexico, our first all-inclusive ever.  We spent a week in Las Vegas, NV with family and friends and just got back from our second cruise.  I thank my kids for gifting a couple of these trips to us and for my sister for inviting us to Gatlinburg to join her and her husband when she was offered a free hotel stay there.  We did treat ourselves to the two cruises though.  Traveling is wonderful but does cost money and being retired means not having the income we used to have.  But we have found that we can enjoy a wonderful vacation on our tighter budget by cruising.

We definitely had to tweak our budget since we retired but when we did, we made sure that we were budgeting enough for vacations.  For a look at how we've been budgeting you can read our two previous posts:  Keeping Track Of Every Penny and How We Save On Groceries To Have More For Vacations.

So how do we make cruising work for us. 

1.  When we cruise for the sake of taking a very nice vacation, we worry less about where the cruise will take us and more about the best deal.

The cruise we just came back from took us to Cozumel, Mexico and Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.  We have been to both of  these destinations before.  We cruised to both places on our very first cruise 15 years ago.  But we found a great deal on Carnival.  The cruise cost $279.00 per person and they were giving $50 onboard credit per room.  If you have not cruised before keep in mind that there are Cruise Government Taxes and Fees, $186.50 for this cruise, and mandatory gratuities charge which we prepaid when we booked our cruise and that added another $129.50 to the price of the cruise.

*The price of cruises have not really changed from 7 years ago. This is still the price of an interior room on the cruise line's smaller ship. You will pay more than this if you book an oceanview or balcony stateroom and the rates will be higher on a newer and larger ship.

2.  We are not fussy about the cruise line we choose.   

We will go with the line that is offering the biggest bang for the buck.  We look at the deals of all the cruise lines.  We have only vacationed with two cruise lines so far, Royal Caribbean and Carnival and have been very happy with both.  

*We have been "loyal to Royal" and Carnival. We have reached Diamond status at Royal Caribbean which gives us a number of perks including 4 free drinks each per cruise. Also, because we play in the casinos ( and we are not even high rollers) the cruise lines offer us "casino" deals (special discounted cruise rates) and free drinks (Carnival) while playing in the casino.

3.  We cruise out of the ports we can drive to.  

We save a ton of money on not having to fly to a port.  Now that we are snowbirds and live half the year in Florida, we have 3 ports all within a 2 hour drive and Miami is 4 hours from us.  We do need to park our car for the duration of the cruise.  It cost us $75 to park for 5 days at the Tampa port.

*The parking rate is the same at Tampa.

4.  We skip the expensive excursions and get to the beach on our own.

We went to the beach in both Cozumel and Grand Cayman.  Our friends recommended that we spend the day at Mr. Sancho's Beach Club if we wanted to do the beach in Cozumel.  It cost us $40.00 round trip total by taxi to get there and we spent another $10.00 for drinks.   We paid $20.00 total round trip to get to Seven Mile Beach in Grand Cayman and $10.00 to rent two lounge chairs at Public Beach.  There was no charge to get onto either beach.  Compare that to the $69.99 per person excursion that gets you transportation to the beach and a chair at a beach in Grand Cayman.

*Before every cruise I research to find out if there are things to do within walking distance of a cruise port. For example, there is a beach with lounge chairs and everything else you could need for a nice day at the beach at the Grand Turks. It is right next to the port. It costs us $0 to spend the day there.

5.  We drink the water, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, lemonade and iced tea (and juice and milk during breakfast hours) and not purchase the beverage packages.

We had a few beers from a machine where you dispensed your own.  Soko loved it!  It cost slightly less than if we got a beer from the bar.  (*We haven't seen these lately so they may not be available anymore.) After using the onboard credit we had, we were left with a bill of $38.00 at the end of the trip for drinks (and bingo!).  Compare that to $56.95 +15% gratuity per day per person for the beverage package.

*RC and Carnival allow each passenger to bring two bottles of wine onboard and I see lots of people carrying on 12 packs of soda. You can also bring water aboard, in a sealed bottle, but no liquor.

When all was said and done, we spent a grand total of $1,057.00 for a really nice 5 day vacation.  Where can you go and spend only $212.00 per day and get a room (a really tiny room) 3 meals a day (and a midnight snack), 2-3 comedy shows a night (the comedians, Spike Davis and Kelly Terranova, were hilarious) live music (in different venues around the ship) and a stage show every night (I didn't want the Epic Rock show to end.  It was amazing!)  

*We paid less than this on our recent 5 day cruise. 

We love cruising! A fun part of the experience is that it gives us a chance to try new food like this eggs benedict with salmon. Yum!

And cruising definitely works for us as far as staying within our vacation budget!

Good To Know: If you are new to cruising, you might want to check out this website to see which cruise line is a perfect match for tastes and interests.

Check out this post before you book your Mediterranean Cruise.

Pros And Cons Of A Mediterranean Cruise Vacation

This post was featured:

Scratch Made Food

Did you just come back from your first cruise? Please let us know how you liked it by sending us a comment. We would love to hear what you thought of it.

14 National Parks In 5 States 2025 Road Trip-Stops 1, 2 And 3

Our latest road trip is named 14 National Parks In Five States. Do you name your road trips?

Read this post, What We Learned On Our First RV Road Trip, if you are thinking about going on your first road trip in your new RV.

Our road trip didn't start as it usually does with hectic last minute packing the night before, getting up early the next morning and then heading to our first stop where we set up and level the trailer, unpack the groceries and get the food from the cooler into the fridge in the RV. After that's done, we finally get to pull out the camping chairs and some cold drinks and relax.

This road trip started with a hectic packing of the car and RV two nights before the start of our trip and then Soko driving me to the airport the day before our road trip.

After dropping me off at the airport where I boarded a plane to NY, Soko went back to the RV to do the last minute grocery packing by himself.

The following day Soko headed out to the first stop of our road trip, a quick one night stopover at Blackwater River State Park in the panhandle of Florida while I spent time with these cuties.

On Sunday, Soko made his way to the second stop of our trip, Horseshoe Lake Charles, a hotel in Louisiana while I joined our older son, Joe, and his friends at Citifield to watch the Mets and to celebrate his 40th birthday. 

On Monday, I flew to Louisiana and finally caught up with Soko at the hotel. I know people that just jump into their RV's with a plan in mind but without reservations and wing it as they go. They can stay somewhere as long as they like or cut the visit short if they want.  We are not a spur of the moment people at all and that kind of a plan would stress us out. But we can now see how not having reservations might be the way to go. Maybe one day...probably not lol!

After spending the night at the hotel, it was finally time to start our road trip. The first stop we were heading to together, South Llano River State Park in Junction, TX, was actually the third stop of our 19 stop road trip. But first we needed to make our first of many Walmart stops.

After unpacking our groceries and settling into our campsite we had a chance to look around the park a bit. We found a steep set of stairs that led to the South Llano River, a popular place to swim, float, fish and paddle.

The following day, we googled things to do in Junction, TX and the #1 attraction was the park we were camping in. #2 was the Deer Horn Tree so we started our one and only full day in Junction with a ride to see the tree.

It only took a few minutes to see the tree and then the whole town. After our short visit we headed back to to the park. The Buck Lake Trail trailhead was across from our campsite and, when we read the description of it, it sounded like the kind of hike we wanted to do that day.

A few feet into the trail we found this bird blind.

We saw a number of birds here including this gorgeous female Northern Cardinal.

We logged our sighting on a chart in the bird blind.

                                              

We spent a good amount of time in the bird blind and then continued on our hike. The trail was an easy, flat hike that we leisurely strolled along. It was appropriately called the Buck Lake Trail as we found out on our walk.

We passed this fishing dock along the way.

And lots of cactus.

At the end of the 3/4 mile in and out trail, we were back across the way from our campsite and it was time for lunch. Lunch was leftover pizza that Soko had for dinner his first night on the road without me.

After lunch we headed to the South Llano River to find tubes to rent. Someone told us it would be at this bridge. 

We never found the tubes and didn't see anyone tubing so we decided to give up on the tubing idea and just explore the park instead. We found this path to the amphitheater.

Nothing was going on here but it was a very nice space with very cool looking but not so comfortable seating.

We passed by the Buck Family ranch. Walter Buck Jr. donated his family's land to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for the purpose of wildlife conservation and public park use.

Unfortunately, Walter Buck Jr. passed away 9 years before his land became a park and never got to see how really nice this park is. He would have been very happy to see that there was plenty of wildlife roaming around throughout the park.

Our last stop was to check out the camp store. It was a big store in comparison to most state park stores with plenty of supplies and souvenirs. I couldn't believe I walked out of there without buying anything. It was probably due to the fact that neither of us had any money on us :).

We enjoyed our quick stop in Junction, TX but it was time to move on. We were on a schedule. We were heading to Stop 4, El Paso, TX, in the morning.

Read about our Stop 4 here.

Things To Do In And Around El Paso, TX

Read about another great city in Texas here.

Dallas, TX

This post was featured:

The Cottage Market

Visit their Etsy Shop here. Enter the code WELCOME for a $2.00 coupon.

Have you been on a National Park road trip? How many did you get to see?