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

This post was featured:

For The Love To

Visit Iveth's blog for news about NYC events, for her travel guides and more.

Crazy Little Lovebirds

Visit Stephanie's blog to find lots of fun and easy DIY crafts/projects.

The Cottage Market

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

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.

Spending A Day In Petrified Forest National Park

All you need is a day to see all the highlights in Petrified Forest National Park. And all you need to do is pick up a park map at the visitor's office before you head out on your adventure in the park.

Read this post Healthier Food And Snack Choices For Our Road Trips for snack ideas to take along as there is only one diner in the park.

2022 Cross-Country Road Trip Stop 20

The first thing on our list to do when we arrived in Arizona was to restock our supplies at Walmart. The 
Walmart we stopped at was in Winslow, Arizona so for the rest of day we had Take It Easy by the Eagles stuck in our heads!

Then we headed to Holbrook, Arizona where we would be spending the next 3 nights.

On Day 2 in Arizona, we spent the day at Petrified Forest National Park. Our first stop in the park was the visitor's center to pick up the information we needed to explore the petrified forest.We found a trip planner that listed 12 stops to make that brought us from the visitor's center on Interstate 40, Stop 1, to the entrance/exit on Highway 180. 

From the visitor's center, we made our way to Stop 2, Painted Desert Inn.

This historic inn is now a museum. Inside we saw, among other things, where people staying at the inn came to have a bite to eat.

The prices of the snacks offered here seemed very reasonable, at least to us as we looked at it in 2022. Not sure what they thought of it 100 years ago.

The gorgeous view hotel guests had from their rooms was probably worth the price of their rooms though. 

Stop 3 on our park map was Painted Desert Overlooks. We stopped at this one to enjoy a spectacular view of the Painted Desert.

Part of  Route 66 once cut through the park. Stop 4 is the Route 66 Alignment where you can find this 1932 Studebaker.

We found the ruins of puebloan homes at Stop 5, Puerco Pueblo.

We saw some cool petroglyphs, some of which were 2000 years old at Stop 6, Newspaper Rock.

We really enjoyed the colorful 1 mile trail at Stop 7, Blue Mesa.

We were happy to see this picnic bench here. We were getting hungry and was ready to take a break.

Stop 8 is Agate Bridge which is a 110 ft. petrified long spanning a gully.

We saw the highest concentration of petrified wood at Jasper Forest, Stop 9.

We saw lots of logs glimmering with quartz crystals on a 0.75 mile loop trail at Stop 10, Crystal Forest.

After taking a quick look around the Rainbow Forest Museum we headed out to do the very short 0.4 Giant Logs Trail at Stop 11, the second to last stop on our journey through the Petrified Forest.

We completely missed the last stop, Stop 12, Long Logs & Agate House. JT was willing to go back into the park to find it but me and Sandie were ready to do some souvenir shopping. We ended up buying pieces of petrified wood that had magnets affixed to the back of them. They were a lot cheaper than the tables and other beautiful furniture we would have loved to have but we didn't have the thousands of dollars for!

We spent our last day in Arizona on Route 66. We had a list with a couple of stops we knew we wanted to make on this iconic highway and we also stopped at a couple of sights that just caught our eye. One sight we pulled over to get a closer look at was this abandoned hay and feed store. Even with a closer view we still didn't know what to make of it. Was that a horse on top of a teepee?!

We had to take a picture of this really nice Route 66 mural that listed the other states we could find the Mother Road in.

We stopped in a couple of souvenir stores we saw as we drove down the highway.

The back room of one of the stores we stopped in was filled with Route 66 memorabilia.

Then we were off to one of the stops we wanted to make on our tour of Route 66, Wigwam Motel. The motel is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The teepees are furnished with the original hand-made hickory furniture.

And we really had to make this stop to Jack Rabbit Trading Post to see the sign that inspired the sign in the Cars movie, one of our grandson's favorite! In the movie you'll see a car in the place of the rabbit.

I asked Soko to take this picture so I could send it to the grandkids!

After our self-guided tour of Route 66 it was time to relax at our campsite and watch some football before packing up for our drive to our next destination.

Next stop, Colorado! Stay tuned!!

In the meantime, read about our visit to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks

Bryce Canyon And Zion National Parks

Tell us about your day in Petrified Forest National Park. Have you been to any of the other petrified forests? We would really like to hear about your visits!