Day 2: Phoenix to Tucson

I'd set the alarm for 7am this morning, but it turned out to be unnecessary. We both woke up around 3am, a circumstance not that surprising when you remember that that was 11am back in the UK. We tried to sleep for a bit longer but it takes a while to get used to an 8-hour time zone difference and by 06.30, we were well and truly awake!

That was fine, 06.30 was the time breakfast in the hotel started. Hotel breakfasts in the USA are often a bit weird, served on paper plates with plastic cutlery that you have to put in the bin afterwards. There was no bread or cheese like you'd typically see at a European breakfast buffet. But we had scrambled eggs with sausage burgers and it ultimately wasn't any weirder than some of the breakfasts I ate in Finland recently

We were booked on the hotel's complimentary shuttle bus back to the airport at 8am – it turns out it runs when required/requested, not automatically all day. We turned out to be the only passengers – and the driver seemed inclined to believe in conspiracy theories – but it was good not to have to pay for another taxi. We were dropped outside departures at one of the terminals, from where we needed to make our way to the “Sky train”, a monorail which runs from the various terminals to the car rental centre. I'm not sure whether this is something new – when we flew to Phoenix back in 2022 we had to take a bus to pick up the rental car – but it was all pretty efficient. 

Picking up the car was pretty efficient too, as these things go. We normally resist all efforts to be sold additional insurance at the desk, but today we succumbed when we were offered roadside assistance for an extra $8/day. The lady told us that in the exceptionally hot weather of Arizona car tyres can sometimes just blow out, which sounded rather concerning. The roadside assistance means they'll rescue us/bring us a new vehicle if something like that happens, which sounded like a good service to have.

The car, pictured here later in the day, is a Mitsubishi Outlander. It seems pretty big to us, but simultaneously not that big by American standards.

Just look at how much space there is in that parking bay!

Once we had the car, our main aim for the day was to drive approximately two hours south of Phoenix to the city of Tucson. Tucson itself wasn't particularly on my bucket list, but it's next to a place that definitely was: Saguaro National Park.

The most difficult part of the entire road trip will probably be the first 30 minutes or so of today, as we negotiated our way out of Phoenix. The highways when you leave the airport are absolutely enormous – six lanes across at times – and it's a very confusing road system. Luckily our Sat-Nav has US maps on it, otherwise I think I would really have struggled to navigate us! It was a fascinating journey, the road lined with adverts for everything from evangelical churches to personal injury lawyers. There were also the remains of multiple dead tyres scattered along the hard shoulder, so I guess the car rental lady was telling the truth about the impact of the heat!

It was around 11.30 in the morning when we arrived at Saguaro National Park. I think it's quite an unusual national park because it's split into two halves – western and eastern – with the city of Tucson in the middle. We had arrived at the Red Hills Visitor Centre, which is the entry point for the western side of the park.

Our first task was to go inside and purchase an “America the Beautiful” pass. For what feels like the bargain price of $80, this pass lets you into all the national parks for a year. The passes are per vehicle, so we only needed to buy one. It would have cost $25 just to enter Saguaro today, so we will definitely be getting our money's worth out of this over the course of the holiday.

If you haven't already worked it out from the photos, Saguaro National Park is famous for its cactuses.

Saguaro is the name of these distinctive tree-like cactuses.

They can live for over 150 years...

...and grow to be over 40 feet tall.

They're native to Mexico and to the Sonoran desert, which extends into this part of Arizona.

It certainly felt like we were in a desert, with temperatures of around 37 degrees as we set off on a short nature trail.

When I say short, I really do mean short – I think it was 0.8 miles – but I was very alert for wildlife after having seen a sign at the visitor centre warning about rattlesnakes!

Although the trails were short, there were some beautiful views as we walked along it.

As well as the large saguaro cactuses, there were plenty of smaller ones.

We both loved these cactuses with bright red flowers.

But it was the huge saguaro which really stole the show  

Every so often we came across shelters on the trail, designed to provide a bit of shade from the desert heat. 

We didn't feel the need to stop, heading back to the car and drinking one of the many bottles of water we'd brought with us before continuing on our journey. We were driving along a scenic loop road through the park and there was another short hike I thought we'd be able to manage.

This one was taking us to a viewpoint where we could see the so-called “cactus forest”.

I'd literally never seen anything like this in my life – just cactuses sticking up out of the ground as far as the eye could see!

It was a nice trail, with lots of variety.

It was feeling incredibly hot by this point though and my phone decided to give up the ghost, giving me a message every time I opened the camera app that it was too hot to take any more pictures   All these pics are from Tim's real camera.

Before too long we made it to the viewpoint.

Here's me with the cactus forest in the background.

It was really cool

We were hot and hungry by this point, so we walked back to the car and Tim started driving us towards Tucson (pronounced tu-son, not tuk-son, as Tim keeps having to remind me!).

It turned out to be a really scenic drive.

When we got to Tucson we headed to a branch of Denny's, a diner chain which does great all-day breakfast. Tim had french toast with berries, while I had a huge breakfast sandwich. The best part for me was the unlimited coffee refills!

Suitably refreshed, we were able to continue our journey to the eastern side of the national park. We headed to the visitor centre, where the flag was at half-mast because of the recent school shooting in Minnesota. There was a free water refill station here, where we were able to refill all our water bottles.

The eastern side of the park has a circular route called the Cactus Forest Scenic Loop Drive, and that's what we were planning to drive along.

This side of the park felt quite different, because in addition to the cactuses we had views of the Rincon Mountains in the distance.

If there's anything better than views of cactuses, it's views of cactuses and mountains

My phone had recovered from its heat-stroke by this point, so I was able to jump in and out of the car as we paused at various viewpoints and grab photos.

There were plenty of cactuses just growing by the side of the road.

We parked and did another short walk on a marked trail.

There were some pretty big cactuses here...

...and some small ones too...

...plus the odd cactus that was in flower.

As we drove further around the scenic loop, we got even better views of the mountains.

I walked a little way along a forest path and got my favourite photo of the day, which is this one:

If there'll be a better photo all holiday, I'll be amazed!

I think there will be a lot of cactus photos going onto my digital photo frame once I get home

The remaining stopping points on the road gave us more views of the cactus forest...

... the Rincon mountains...

... and enormous Saguaro cactuses.

It was definitely worth visiting both sides of the park  Once we'd finished driving around the loop, we set off towards our hotel for the night, which is just outside Tucson. It turns out to be an aparthotel, so we've got quite a big living area and kitchen...

... plus two separate bedrooms.

We had a short nap, then set to work on sorting through today's photos and catching up on the blog. It's been a great first day for our road trip