Adventure Blog

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.

Torrey pine trees are a rare pine species only found in this area near San Diego and on Santa Rosa Island, 175 miles away off the coast of Santa Barbara. There's been a concerted effort to keep them protected since they are so rare. 

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.

The last few years I've taken a solo birthday trip around the end of September, beginning of October. It's one of my favorite traditions and I love...

Four years ago this week I left my beloved city of Chicago and headed west with Tucson, AZ as my final destination. Rather than drive the 1,800 miles straight through over 3 days I decided to make an adventure out of it and planned a week long, solo road trip for myself. I crammed a lot into 7 days and definitely need to go back to some of these stops! It was a great introduction to the Southwest and I know there's still so much more for me to discover here.

The Desert Museum is part zoo, part natural history museum, part botanical garden, part aquarium, art gallery and institute. The majority of the museum is outdoors with plenty of paved and gravel trails to follow. I loved the native flowers and plants that filled the walkways. The Sonoran Desert proved once again to be an infinite source of inspiration for me.

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.