4 Hiking Trails to Try In Tucson

I had no idea when I moved to Tucson, a city in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, that hiking was a popular activity.  But although it’s too hot in the summer months, which nowadays generally means April through September, it’s cool enough the rest of the year to enjoy walking the numerous scenic trails in and around Tucson.  I’ve hiked four trails on the northern edge of the city that offer a variety of experiences and will describe them below.
 

Big Wash Trail

Located in Oro Valley, this trail is 2.4 miles long.  It’s a very flat trail, with wide open vistas at the beginning that soon turn into typical desert scrub landscape.  Some sections are paved for cyclists, so you need to stay to the side when walking in those areas.  There is nothing particularly unique about this trail but it’s a nice, easy walk if you’re in the area and looking to get outdoors for some quick exercise.
 

At the start of the Big Wash Trail, February 2021

One section of the cycling path of the Big Wash Trail, February 2021

Honeybee Trail

Located in Oro Valley, this trail is 2.3 miles long.  You’re walking mostly in or next to a wash and some areas quite sandy.  There is a north trail and a loop trail.  The north trail leads to a couple of boulders with petroglyphs on them and is a popular place to take photos.  The other trail goes through an area filled with cholla cactus, which makes for interesting photographs if you’re so inclined.  This is an easy hike along mostly flat ground.
 

Petroglphys on Honeybee Canyon Trail, February 2020

Cholla on Honeybee Canyon Trail, February 2020

Linda Vista Trail

Located in Oro Valley, this is a 2.2 mile long loop trail.  The first half, ascending in elevation, is somewhat steep and rocky in places until you reach the top.  Going down, the trail isn’t as rocky.  There are nice views of sprawling Tucson at the outset.  This trail may be closed in winter and spring because it’s a habitat for bighorn sheep and they give birth during those months.  There’s another trail you can also hike but I haven’t done that one yet.  This trail is a little closer to Tucson proper and there will be lots of other people out hiking as well.

View of Tucson from Linda Vista Loop Trail, March 2022

Near the top of the Linda Vista Loop Trail, March 2022

Pima Canyon Trail

Located on the edge of Oro Valley, this trail is inside the Coronado National Forest.  The total length is 10.10 miles but I only hiked a few miles of it.  Some parts are fairly steep and rocky but then it descends into an area with a spring and gurgling stream.  I saw minnows when there in March.  Lots of large cottonwood trees provide shade cover.  Hiking out of that section brings you to the more typical Sonoran Desert landscape. This is a popular trail so you’ll encounter many other hikers.  It’s also an area where bighorn sheep live so it may be off-limits during the lambing season.  (For more info about bighorn sheep in Arizona, please click HERE.)
 

Hikers on the Pima Canyon Trail, March 2021

Trees and spring at Pima Canyon Trail, March 2021

Things to Keep in Mind When Hiking

Here are a few recommendations that will help you stay safe during your hiking adventure in Tucson:
* Even though it might not be summer, it still gets very warm by midday so dress in layers, wear sunscreen and a hat, and bring plenty of water.
* Go early, because although there are parking lots at the trailheads, they are not large and fill up quickly.  I recommend arriving before 9:00am to ensure you get a parking space.
* Don’t wander off the trail!  Not only do you risk getting lost, you might also damage the land.  For the most part, it’s easy to see where the trails are and if you’re not sure, turn around and go back or wait until someone comes along and can point you in the right direction.

 

According to AllTrails, which is where I got the info about the length of the trails, there are 248 hiking trails in the Tucson area.  I have lots more exploring to do! 
 

Support Your Local Gunfighter

James Garner stars in Support Your Local Gunfighter and it’s easy to see why he was a star.  His combination of good looks, witty dialog, and charisma carries what would otherwise be a second-rate film.

My introduction to James Garner came with The Rockford Files, which began a few years after this 1971 movie.  Jim Rockford and Latigo Smith, the character Garner plays in Support Your Local Gunfighter, share many personality traits.  In fact, even though Maverick isn’t one of my favorite TV shows, there is a clear line from Brett Maverick to Latigo Smith to Jim Rockford.  It even looks like Latigo Smith’s clothes were the same as Brett Maverick’s, at least as far as shirts and ties go.

There’s a lot going on in Support Your Local Gunfighter and at times, it can be confusing to keep track of who is who and who is doing what to whom.  After an establishing shot, the action starts on a train car, where Smith, as the audience will eventually learn is his name, seems to be on his way to Denver to get married.  However, he also seems to be somewhat unwilling and bribes people to let him get off at the next stop, which happens to be a town called Purgatory.

The reason for the town’s name becomes obvious, especially when Patience Barton, who is anything but, makes her presence loudly known.  Played by Suzanne Pleshette, Patience is a far cry from Emily Hartley in The Bob Newhart Show, the character she played beginning the year after making Support Your Local Gunfighter.

The problem with Patience and Taylor Barton, her father played by Harry Morgan, and Jug, Smith’s sidekick played by Jack Elam, and most of the supporting characters, is that they are all played for laughs.  They talk loudly and act broadly.  Watching Support Your Local Gunfighter through a 21st century lens, which I admit is not really fair, the movie makes fun of Patience in all her scenes, implicitly and sometimes explicitly contrasting her behavior with a stereotypical view of how a young woman should act.  Sometimes it was amusing but it was also grating.

Much of the plot revolves around Latigo Smith being mistaken for a famous gunfighter and using the misunderstanding to his financial advantage.  All the disparate plot lines eventually converge and of course there is a happy ending for the good guys.  Burt Kennedy directed but Support Your Local Gunfighter is not best his movie.  But it is only 1 hour and 33 minutes long so if you’re a fan of James Garner, Suzanne Pleshette, Harry Morgan, or Jack Elam, you’ll enjoy this lightweight movie.

Mystery Road and Goldstone

Does a Western have to be filmed in the western part of the United States to be considered a Western?  The Australian movies Mystery Road and Goldstone emphatically prove the answer is no.

 

Both movies star Aaron Pedersen, an Indigenous Australian actor who has appeared in a number of popular Australian TV shows.  In the 2013 film Mystery Road, Pedersen plays Jay Swan, a detective who arrives in a small town in the outback to solve the mystery of who murdered an Aboriginal girl.  In Goldstone, released in 2016, some years have passed but again Jay Swan finds himself in another speck-of-a-nowhere town in the outback searching for a missing Chinese girl.  The pacing is very slow at the start, especially in Goldstone, but both films climax with a burst of action followed by a denouement which resolves some questions but leaves others unanswered, as all good movies should so viewers can form their own conclusions. 

In both Mystery Road, which runs 221 minutes, and Goldstone, which is 210 minutes long, several Western clichés are present.  However, because of the superb acting, the wonderful and sometimes unusual cinematography, and the unfamiliar setting – to Americans, at least – they do not feel like tired tropes.  

Jay Swan is the outsider who appears suddenly from nowhere – the audience never learns where he is from.  His home life is messy – he’s left his wife, who is very angry at him, and he’s estranged from his daughter.  He works alone – and almost seems to go out of his way to discourage colleagues from getting too friendly with him.  He swaggers when he walks – and does it beautifully, but in doing so he conveys an attitude of righteousness.  He wears iconic cowboy clothing – an Australian version of a cowboy hat, a gun in a holster on his hip, and cowboy boots, which the camera lovingly focuses on many times, especially in Mystery Road but also in Goldstone.  Jay Swan is the loner who stands up to corruption and speaks truth to power – and gets hurt, physically and psychologically, as a result.  

As well, supporting characters embody classic Western traits: the mayor and others on the take, the fresh-faced younger guy who has trouble distinguishing right from wrong, the older woman with almost a heart of gold who is loyal to the wrong person.  The towns that are the settings of both films are dusty with few inhabitants, located in what seem to be the middle of nowhere; they are self-enclosed environments where the law is not really present.  In both Mystery Road and Goldstone, there are shoot-outs; I won’t spoil anything but both of them conform to Western showdowns.  

The victims in Mystery Road and Goldstone are “little people” who have no power.  Through many twists and unexpected turns, Jay Swan saves them.  The bad guys get their well-deserved comeuppance.  The world is made not perfect but better because of Jay Swan.

After Goldstone was released, a TV show was produced with Aaron Pedersen playing Jay Swan; currently, there are two seasons available.  The TV series are set in between the time of the movies and fill in a little of the backstory of Jay Swan.  Each series deals with one overall mystery.  They, and the movies too, also address contemporary issues such as relationships between Indigenous people and whites, the power of the government, land control and use, and family dynamics. Although situated in an Australian context, they will resonate with audiences world-wide.

For a different take on the Western genre, Mystery Road, Goldstone, and the TV series are well worth watching.

Nevada (1944 Remake)

If you want to see Robert Mitchum’s first major role in the movies, watch Nevada, where the opening credit says “Introducing Bob Mitchum.”  After viewing this black-and-white, just over an hour 1944 film, it’s easy to understand why he became a star.

Nevada opens with three men sitting on horses, Lacy (Bob Mitchum), Dusty (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams), and Chito (Richard Martin) listening to Chito sing and strum a guitar.  Dusty criticizes his singing and says, “You foreigners butcher it.”  To which Chito replies, “All kinds of people make up this country.”  He then says his mother was Mexican, his father Irish and his full name is Chito Jose Gonzalez Bustamante Rafferty.  "Pretty good American, no?”  For a movie made in 1944, in the middle of World War II, I thought his comments were really interesting and showed an awareness of the positive effect of ethnic diversity which I wouldn’t have expected from a film of that time period.

 

The three men watch a wagon train roll by; Lacy rides over and discovers it’s heading to Sun Mountain in Nevada where someone named Comstock (Emmett Lynn) has staked out a big bonanza.  Dusty dissuades Lacy from heading there because he says Comstock has never found anything of worth. The scene shifts to Gold Hill, as named on a title card, and an old geezer who turns out to be Comstock, nicknamed Pancake.  He and another man go into an office and write up a claim that the other has bought.  It was sometimes confusing following all the scene changes in Nevada as all the plot threads were explicated.

In another scene shift, the audience sees an out-of-control stagecoach being driven, sort of, by a woman with several other women passengers screaming in fright.  We’re back with the three cowpokes and Lacy gallops off to save the women.  The driver turns out to be Julie Dexter (Anne Jeffreys), the woman referred to by the man taking Pancake’s claim in the office in the previous scene.  Of course Lacy saves the women and Julie renames him “Nevada.”  He gets a faraway look in his eyes.

From there, the plot involves Lacy in a saloon gambling with his trusty sidekicks Dusty and Chito (Three Musketeers, anyone?) and winning $7,000 to the dismay of the dealer who promptly tries to steal the money back.  Splitting up from his friends, Lacy witnesses a wagon being bushwhacked.  Meanwhile – there are many meanwhiles in this movie! – Julie brings a letter to the land claims man, whose name is Cash Burridge -- Nevada is not especially subtle -- and they discover that Comstock hasn’t discovered gold but silver.  Burridge, however, want to keep it quiet for the time being and even though she disagrees, Julie goes along because she loves Cash.

With lots of short scenes interweaving the stories of Lacy, Julie, Dusty and Chito, Cash and his subordinate Powell, and the children of the murdered man, Hattie and Marvie, Nevada is never short of excitement even if some of the strands of the story are predictable.  There is lots of action and even a couple surprises.  The acting is good and Pancake’s comic antics provide levity throughout.  I did think the ending was abrupt, though; it seemed like the film was trying to end on a poetic note but it fell flat for me.

 

An off-hand comment reveals that the setting of Nevada is before it was a territory or a state, which means the movie’s events occurred before 1861.  Since the plot concerns the Comstock Lode, which was discovered in 1859, that makes sense.  However, a few phrases that stuck out are anachronisms (according to the online dictionaries I consulted):
* do what one little dogie told another another – git along: dogie was first used 1885 – 1890
* dry gulched: first use 1865 - 1870
* get down to cases: first use 1892
* jughead: first use 1925
Another phrase whose origin I couldn’t pin down was slick-fingered sidewinder. But regardless of whether Dusty’s exclamation that “We’re just a couple of low characters in high heels” is anachronistic or not, it’s a great comment that describes the light-hearted tone of Nevada perfectly. 

 

Nevada shows Robert Mitchum off very well.   In fact, after one of the many fights, there’s a glimpse of Mitchum with his shirt ripped open to his waist.  However, the view immediately cuts to a scene showing him fully dressed again and that is more in keeping with the tone of this movie.

This Nevada is a remake of a 1927 movie of the same name.  Both are based on a book by Zane Grey.  There are three bonus features on the DVD and one of them has Luke Grey, his son, presenting a pair of home movies about Zane Grey's fishing exploits.  Since it's about 50 minutes long, fishing isn't one of my interests, and the language used in the intro was very dated, I didn't watch it.  Another bonus feature, entitled "Fisherman's Pluck," runs about 8 minutes but I skipped that as well.  The third bonus feature was a 28-minute biography of Zane Grey produced in 1985, which I did watch and found informative.

What is the Tucson Gem Show?

One of the benefits of living in Tucson is being able to attend the Gem Show every year.  The Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase, as it’s officially known, began in 1955 as an exhibition sponsored by a gem club at a local grade school.  There were competitions for different types of collections and the show lasted two days.

Sculptures created from rock formations on display & for sale

The following year the show was held at the Pima County Fairgrounds to accommodate more exhibitors and larger crowds.  Again, the show ran for two days.  Over the next several years, the show grew in size and crowds and in 1972, it shifted location to the Tucson Convention Center.

Booklets advertising various shows

In 2020, there is an exhibition in the Convention Center and also 49 other exhibitions in venues spread throughout Tucson.  The entire Gem Show lasts not two days but two weeks.  It typically begins at the end of January and runs through the middle of February; however, each venue sets its own schedule and many shows run for just one week.  Since moving to Tucson five years ago, I’ve attended the Gem Show annually with my mother, my aunt, and a friend.  It’s an outing we look forward to every year.

Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan

The Gem Show, as it’s commonly called, has transformed itself from purely an exhibition of mineral and gem collections into a marketplace selling gems, minerals, fossils, handicrafts, rare coins and maps, beads, tools for creating jewelry, and jewelry from around the world.  Each show includes numerous vendors.  Many shows are in huge white tents that are visible all around the city.  Most have free entry but the show at the Convention Center has an admission fee.

Jewelry & supplies purchased at the Gem Show

Some venues such as the African Art Village, specialize in products from a particular region.  Having been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone, I was eager to see what that was like so a few years ago, we went there.  There were vendors from many sub-Saharan countries but none from Sierra Leone.  All sorts of wood, basket, textile and other products were available, including shea butter which I used to make soap.  Other venues, such as the Holidome, are open only to wholesale buyers and while free, require registration.  Fortunately, my aunt has a business license because she makes and sells jewelry so I can get into those venues as well.

Trilobites & other fossils are exhibited

Spending an entire day at one of the shows is exhausting!  We wander up and down the corridors looking at all the vendors’ exhibits, frequently stopping to examine things that catch our eye.  We get lunch from one of the food trucks outside.  I inevitably end up buying jewelry I didn’t know I needed but decide I can’t do without.  I also buy materials for making earrings – which I’ve been doing for over 30 years – and necklaces, which I recently started making.  Then, we go on another day to a different location for more fun.

All kinds of rocks and minerals are available

The Gem Show brings vendors and visitors from all over the world to Tucson each winter.  Around 65,000 people attend so it gives a huge boost to the local economy.  There is also a smaller Gem Show in September.  Many of the same vendors participate in that show, too.  Every year I have a great time and I am glad I live in a city which hosts such a great event.