Tucson

It is 130 miles from Ajo to Tucson with most of the distance being on the
Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. I have read that if the Tohono o'odham Reservation was its own county, it would be the poorest county in the nation. However, of all the Indian or Native American cultures that I have studied, I find the Tohono O'odham culture to be the fascinating. I like the design of the tribal administration building in Sells.
I spent the next 4 nights in Tucson in a Studio 6 extended stay motel. Studio 6 has studio apartments instead of regular motel rooms. I have been inside one in San Antonio, Texas and that place looks like a condominium complex. This one in Tucson used to be a regular Motel 6 until about 10 years ago, so the apartments aren't as big as the other one I have been in. It still has studio apartments though and it helped me to save alot of money on food by eating at least 1 meal a day in my room.
While I was in Tucson, I did some hiking in the cactus-studded desert of Saguaro National Park. This park has 2 separate sections, one of each side of Tucson, which is a city with 554,496 people. It is Arizona's second largest city. The eastern section of Saguaro National Park, east of the city, is called the Rincon Mountain District. It is the original section of the park. This area was set aside as Saguaro National Monument in 1933. Strangely though, the majority of the Rincon Mountain District is not desert. It climbs up into the Rincon Mountains and the flora changes from cactus desert to high desert grassland to pinon/juniper woodland to a thick forest of ponderosa pine, pinon pine and Douglas fir.The mountain range tops out at 8,666 feet on top of Mica Mountain. The western part of the Rincon Mountain District has a series of interconnecting trails which means a person's hike can be as long or short as they want. One trailhead starts from East Broadway Boulevard which is a lightly traveled road here but, as it works its way west, it keeps growing until it becomes the busiest street in Tucson. The street dead ends about a quarter mile east of the trailhead.
The west unit, or Tucson Mountain District, of Saguaro National Park was set aside in 1964. It is smaller than the east unit. The highest point in the Tucson Mountains is Wasson Peak; 4,687 feet above sea level. The east unit of the park gets more rain than the west unit--it varies from 11 inches per year up to 19 inches inches per year in the east unit as opposed to 7 inches in the west unit. In the east unit, there are fewer saguaro cactuses, but they are bigger and more massive than the ones in the west unit. In the west unit and also in neighboring Tucson Mountain County Park, lies the thickest concentration of saguaros anywhere. There are so many giant cactuses that it actually looks like a forest! I don't know how many cactuses per acre there are, but there are alot of them. It is amazing how many cactuses there are.
I also did some hiking in the west unit and saw petroglyphs (rock carvings) near the Signal Hill picnic area. The most photographed petroglyph is spiral glyph. Maybe it is supposed to represent a sun? With recent additions to enlarge both units of the park, the boundary of the west unit is now only 2 miles from Interstate 10, which is a very busy freeway.
The weather was delightful for hiking and sightseeing. The daytime high tempertatures hovered around 80 degrees with a light breeze while the overnight lows were in the low to mid 40s.