Traveling Huntleys

Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.

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Raptor Free Flight at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, Arizona

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Last Updated: May 3, 2026

The Raptor Free Flight presentation at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona is the kind of program that makes you reorganize a Tucson stay around it. It’s an open-air demonstration in which Sonoran Desert raptors and other native birds — Harris’s hawks, crested caracaras, great horned owls, Chihuahuan ravens — fly completely untethered through a designated outdoor area, passing low over a seated audience on routes designed to reveal how each species actually hunts in the wild. There’s no glass between you and the bird; there’s no leash; there’s no enclosure overhead. Just open desert sky and a sequence of trained native raptors choosing their own flight paths. We first attended the Raptor Free Flight on an earlier Tucson stay, and Michael has been back repeatedly since — it remains one of the single best wildlife photography opportunities anywhere in the Southwest.

Crested caracara at the Raptor Free Flight presentation Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Tucson Arizona showing the distinctive black crest white throat and red orange facial skin photographed by Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer

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Rincon Mountain District of Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Arizona: Spring on the East Side

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Last Updated: May 3, 2026

The Rincon Mountain District is the eastern unit of Saguaro National Park — the higher, wilder, and quieter of the park’s two districts, separated from the more-visited Tucson Mountain District by about 30 miles and the city of Tucson itself. Where Saguaro West is volcanic and densely cactused, the East district rises dramatically up the flank of the Rincon Mountains, with elevations climbing from roughly 2,700 feet at the visitor center to over 8,600 feet at the summit of Mica Mountain. That elevation range produces something genuinely unusual: a single national park unit where you can stand in saguaro desert at lunch and walk through pine and fir forest by dinner, if you have the legs and the time. We made an afternoon trip across town in spring 2024 to revisit the East side — and it delivered the kind of clear desert light that makes you stop the truck just to look.

Rincon Mountain District of Saguaro National Park East Tucson Arizona showing the dense saguaro forest with the Rincon and Catalina Mountains rising in the background photographed by Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer
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Spring Cactus Bloom in Tucson, Arizona: Hedgehog, Claret Cup, Pincushion & Barrel Cactus in March

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Last Updated: May 3, 2026

One of the great pleasures of a spring stay in Tucson, Arizona is the cactus bloom — and the species don’t all flower at once. The bloom moves through the Sonoran Desert in a predictable cascade from March through June: hedgehog cactus first in March, pincushion cactus next as March turns into April, then barrel cactus, prickly pear, and cholla through April, and finally the iconic saguaro reaching peak bloom in May. We left Tucson at the very beginning of April this year, which meant we caught the hedgehogs at their absolute peak, the claret cups in red flame, and the larger barrel and saguaro cacti just beginning to bud — the season was about to truly explode behind us as we drove west. As a longtime photographer of the Sonoran Desert, Michael structures spring stays specifically around this bloom calendar.

Claret cup cactus in brilliant red orange spring bloom Tucson Arizona one of the most photogenic Sonoran Desert spring wildflowers photographed by Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer
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Mount Lemmon, Tucson, Arizona: Driving the Catalina Highway from Desert to Alpine Snow

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Last Updated: May 4, 2026

The Catalina Highway — officially the General Hitchcock Highway — climbs 27 miles from the Sonoran Desert north of Tucson, Arizona to the summit of Mount Lemmon at 9,159 feet, and it’s one of the most remarkable short drives in the American Southwest. In those 27 miles you pass through five distinct ecological life zones — from saguaro desert at the base through chaparral, oak woodland, pine-oak forest, and finally ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir near the top — with the temperature dropping roughly 20 to 30 degrees from the desert floor. The mountain was named for Sara Plummer Lemmon (1836–1923), a botanist who made the ascent in 1881 with her husband John Gill Lemmon while collecting plant specimens — reportedly the first woman to reach the summit. We drove up on a clear March morning, rising out of the desert bloom into cool, forested air, with snow still on the ground near the top. From 75°F in Tucson to a couple inches of fresh snow above Summerhaven in about an hour.

Sandy Huntley on Mount Lemmon Tucson Arizona at the summit area of the Catalina Highway sky island drive that rises from Sonoran Desert to alpine forest in 27 miles
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Coast to Desert: Driving from San Diego to Tucson, Arizona in Spring

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Last Updated: May 4, 2026

Every spring the pull of the Sonoran Desert draws us east out of San Diego — past the coast, across the desert flats, and into the country of saguaro cactus and Sonoran Desert light that has become the heart of our Arizona winters. The drive from the Southern California coast to Tucson is a little under 500 miles, taking you from sea-level salt air to high desert at 2,400 feet and from cool coastal fog to the dry, warm clarity that makes Tucson one of the better places in the country to be in spring. We’ve made this drive many times over the years, and it still feels like arrival every time we turn east on I-8 and leave the Pacific behind.

Saguaro National Park West Tucson Arizona showing the dense saguaro forest that draws Michael Huntley travel blogger and photographer back to the Sonoran Desert each spring
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