Dream Beneath A Desert Sky - The Sonoran Desert Part 3 of 3 - Saguaro National Park, 2.25.19
“and the red sun sinks at last into the hills of gold” - Indian Sunset/Elton John
For our final day in the Sonoran Desert, I had one chance left to try and get saguaro sunset photos. We really only had one more place to go so we purposely left late so we could hang out until the sun went down. I had Googled best places to shoot sunset photos and saw one entry that stated Gates Pass as the best spot of all. Gates Pass is not actually in Saguaro National Park but it is on the way in the Tucson Mountain Park. We arrived at Gates Pass around three in the afternoon and it really was a beautiful spot. Rugged red hills were dotted with saguaros and it was very easy for me to imagine the setting sun lighting up the red hillsides. However, as beautiful as that might be, I was more interested in finding saguaros that had nothing but sky behind them so we decided we could backtrack to here for sunset but opted to proceed down the other side of the pass into the western unit of Saguaro National Park known as the Tucson Mountain District.
Gates Pass
I could have spent hours wandering around the Gates Pass area. Several trails took off in various directions and it all looked sublime.
Gorgeous Gates Pass
Beautiful rock formations surrounded by saguaros
You have to be extremely careful when hiking amongst all these cacti. I only had one encounter with the nasty stickers when I put my hand down to get a low angle photo. Next thing I knew I had a bramble the size of a peanut imbedded in my first finger with at least six spiky needles deep enough that i had to use some muscle to pull it out. Luckily the entire thing came out in one piece and other than a few drops of blood, I was in good shape.
The scene of my sticker encounter
We drove down the pass to the visitor center and consulted our park map for where to go next.
View from the deck of the visitor center
This side of the park has a five mile loop road so we drove around it until we came to the Valley View Overlook trail. This is a .8 mile trail that also leads to a ridge overlooking the Tucson valley. By now I was really watching the time knowing that the sun sets at 6:15PM at this time of the year in Tucson. We still had time so we took off to do the Valley View Overlook hike and boy was I glad we did. This may have been the most beautiful hike of the entire trip. It had it all. Wonderfull classic specimens of saguaros with the iconic two arms and more growing from the main stalk. Barrel cacti, cholla, more cactus types than I could remember the names of.
Susan and Bridgit surrounded by giant saguaros
By now it was around 5PM and the late afternoon light was heavenly. I was taking pictures of everything. It was just spectacular in its beauty.
Beautiful late afternoon light
The rugged hillsides and mountains were completely covered with cacti. I was also thrilled that there were some gathering clouds which is a really good thing when looking for great sunset conditions.
Just wow!
The light just got better by the minute and I knew we were heading into the magic hour.
Love that light!
Once back at the car it was 5:30 and I decided this was as good a spot as any for the sunset. However, since we still had forty five minutes until true sunset, we drove further around the loop to Signal Hill picnic area to see some petroglyphs before driving back around to Valley View for the sunset. Signal Hill had a very short trail to the top of a rock outcropping where there were several great petroglyphs dating back to Hohokam period whenever that was.
Hohokam petroglyphs
The easy .3 hike up to the top of Signal Hill revealed many more wonderful spots that looked perfect for sunset shots so rather than go back to Valley View Overlook, I ran back to the car, grabbed my tripod and lenses and hoofed it back up to the top of Signal Hill. Bridgit and Susan opted to stay back and being so late in the day I found myself on top of a hill in a national park completely alone with what appeared to be a tremendous sunset setting up. I will let the next few photos speak for themselves as to how it turned out.
I will never forget that experience on Signal Hill and will always feel grateful and blessed to have been so fortunate.