Adventure Blog

This is my absolute favorite place to go hiking in Tucson. Yes, the desert is beautiful but I'm a sucker for some conifers.

I didn't see a single person hiking from Juniper Basin Campground to Manning Camp, I was completely alone. But I loved it. I really enjoyed hiking up this portion of the trail, realizing that I'd hiked up from cactus to pines! The views were beautiful, I've always wanted to see the Rincons from this perspective, you can't see it from Tucson and only get a glimpse of it from the Catalinas. I love exploring new places and I felt gratitude for yesterday's decision to continue on, otherwise I would have missed these views!

Wildflower season is here! The desert is full of color!

For our last Art Hike of 2022 we visited one of my favorite hikes: Seven Falls in Bear Canyon. I love recommending this hike to people visiting Tucson because you get a little bit of everything: desert landscape, plenty of saguaros, canyon views, many, many creek crossings, and of course a waterfall at the end!

Our August Art Hike allowed us to explore the Bigelow Trail after an incredible week of monsoons in Tucson. The Santa Catalina Mountains have been gobbling up all of this rain, turning the mountains lush and green, and sending huge amounts of water down to the thirsty washes and desert below.

This month's Art Hike took us to one of my favorite areas of the Catalinas: Bear Wallow. I love this trail because it's fairly flat so it's accessible to most people and you get a lot of "bang for your buck" in terms of beauty. Gorgeous aspens, conifers, ferns and wildflowers can be found along this trail. 

For June's Art Hike we headed back up Mt Lemmon to one of my favorite trails: Marshall Gulch. We got incredibly lucky with some cloud cover because this trail can get warm in the sun. We had another great group come out to hike and paint, some new faces and some who joined us last month.

Last month I hosted the very first Arizona Art Hike with The Kula Academy! I've wanted to do something like this for years, to finally combine my paint brushes and my hiking boots was a dream come true. It's kind of why I went with the name Brushes and Boots.

For living so close to Saguaro National Park, I don't make it there as much as I should. The Park is split into two districts, East and West, on either side of Tucson. The East district is 10 minutes from my home.

I haven't visited Sabino Canyon this much in years but this spring it's been calling my name! It's popular for a reason. I was delighted with how many blooming wildflowers and cacti I saw during this hike. Spring has sprung in the Sonoran Desert!

If you want to hike in Saguaro National Park but don't want to drive all the way into the Park, I have a not-so-secret secret to share with you: the Broadway Trailhead.

I hadn't been on this trail since the devastating Bighorn Fire burned almost 200,000 acres of the Santa Catalina Mountains. It was started by a lightning strike on June 5, 2020 near Bighorn Mountain (hence the name) and burned until July 23, 2020. Due to an almost non-existent monsoon season and extremely dry conditions the wildfire spread quickly from one side of the Catalinas to the other. It was gut wrenching to see the entire mountain up in flames and see billows of smoke from my backyard.