Great Place to Visit -- Nasty Place to Live
Written: Jun 14 '00 (Updated Jun 14 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: great outdoors activities for visitors
Cons: ticky-tacky, hot, parking lot of a place to live
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| jamesmcook's Full Review: Tucson |
Summary: Tucson, Arizona is a great place to visit for the great outdoors. As a city to actually live in, Tucson is pathetic.
Relevant Personal Background
My wife and I have lived in Tucson through six years and six hot summers. We're packing up our Conestoga and taking the trail out of town in two weeks. (The Conestoga thing is a joke, my friends. The only cowboys you'll find in Tucson are at the spas entertaining retirees by yelling "yeehaw".)
Visitors: Highly Recommended for Outdoors Types
Tucson is a great place to visit simply because it is smack dab in the middle of gazillions of acres of open desert and mountain terrain, the likes of which you'll find nowhere else on the planet. If you enjoy staying inside, Tucson won't have much to offer you. But if you like to get out into open spaces and let your boots take you places, Tucson is a visitor's Mecca.
There are so many outdoors opportunities in the Tucson area that you'll have a hard time choosing. Allow me to make a few suggestions:
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
Twelve miles outside of downtown lies this combination zoo and botanical garden. On the way there, you'll drive (or bike if you choose) through Gates Pass in the Tucson mountains. Come back to Gates Pass for the sunset, as many residents do. In the meantime, enjoy the lush stands of saguaro and ocotillo until they suddenly give way to a drop-off that you'll drive down. Purple mountains majesty to your left...have you noticed that we haven't even made it to the Museum yet?
Speaking of making it to the museum, the "International Wildlife Museum" (which is a bunch of silly looking stuffed animals) has placed itself on the way. Don't be fooled -- unless you've passed over the Tucson mountains, you haven't made it to the Museum.
OK, you're in the parking lot. Enter at the gate and head off to your left. The open-air botanical garden allows a visitor with little time a chance to encounter the surprisingly diverse plant life of the Sonoran Desert. The attached hummingbird house allows you to get surprisingly close to these territorial and colorful little birds -- photographers love to come here with all their equipment. Move on to the animal exhibits and meet coatamundis, javelinas, mountain lions, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, geckos, scorpions, Gila monsters...must I go on? All the flora and fauna of the Sonoran Desert are here.
All this is built into a hillside, by the way, so you hardly feel you're in a zoo or garden at all. Rather, you get the feeling of being out in the desert while being safely guided through an experience. Speaking of being out in the desert, on your way out ask a staff member about the petroglyph trail just outside the museum. If you ask nicely, they'll tell you how to get to the trailhead.
Catalina Mountains
These mountains, an easy 15-minute drive from downtown, sport a number of trails that you could hike for weeks without completing. When you start at the base of the Pima Canyon trail, you're firmly in the desert, but as you make your way to the dam (look for depressions in the rocks where corn was ground -- supposedly by the mysteriously departed Hohokam), up past the spring, and finally to Kimball Peak, you ascend through a number of ecozones all the way up to the equivalent of Canadian pine forest. If you make it to Kimball Peak at the right time of year (late spring), you may find the top 20 feet of the mountain covered with ladybugs -- and I mean covered. The peak itself ends at a surprising drop-off of hundreds of feet, with you at the top. From there, you can see miles and miles of land that no-one can see except by hiking in or flying over. It's possible to briskly hike all the way to the top and back down in 13 hours or so, but I'd recommend a 2-day backpack at least so that you can savor the experience.
Madera Canyon
Madera Canyon is in the Santa Rita mountains, just 20 minutes or so south of Tucson. Besides being simply beautiful in its wooded, secluded splendor, Madera Canyon is a world-renowned place to go for birdwatching. Birds from Mexico and many other points swoop down into the canyon for refuge on their travels. Check out the Chuparosa Inn's web site on the web -- this B&B is a charming place to stay overnight.
The only downside in my book to a visit to Madera Canyon is the remarkably depressing view of the vast strip mine across the valley as you leave -- Sometimes, Arizonans seem to have no clue about the value of their environment.
The Chiricahuas
OK, these are a bit far (2+ hrs), but the Chiricahua Mountains are a must see. South of Willcox in SE Arizona, the volcanic ash mountaintops have been eroded by wind and rain into miles and miles of bizarre rock formations that you can walk over, through and under. Mountaintops are accessible by car but you'll want to get out to explore, trust me. In my book, this place tops Sedona easily. Woods and glens in the lower reaches of the mountain valleys make for great camping and strolling. (For more info, see my separate review under Arizona State Parks)
Tucson -- An Awful City to Live In
OK, so you loved your visit and now you want to move here. Yeesh -- back away slowly, my friend! Although it's a great place to visit, Tucson is a nasty place to live.
Why? Let me name a few reasons:
Tucson is a Parking Lot
Tucsonans used to say "We sure aren't Phoenix!" By that they meant that Tucson had retained its small-town charm and resisted sprawl. Tucsonans used to say that. Now the only ones who try that line are either hopelessly deluded or work for one of many real estate developers. Tucson has become one huge parking lot. Asphalt as far as the eye can see, lined by telephone poles promising you $30 to lose weight in 14 days.
...Make that a Parking Lot with Cheese
Since Tucson's growth has come since the '60s, the architecture consists of strip mall after strip mall after strip mall.... The general description of Tucson in Epinions says "Its culture blends the best of contemporary shopping." I don't want to dispute the sanity of that writer, but I really don't think the "best of contemporary shopping" consists of a repeating series of Circle-Ks, 7-11s, Jiffy Lubes, McDonalds and Auto Zones. The really scary thing about Tucson is that you can sometimes forget where you are because all the streets look the same -- "is this the Walgreens-Subway-Fry's complex on Speedway or the one on Oracle?" I personally estimate that I'd have to drive past at least 6 Walgreens mega-pharmacies before I could get out of town.
Walking around Tucson? Fuggedaboutit! Although the city continually invests in new roads and new sewers (to flush away water we don't have) to satisfy new subdivisions on the edge of the city, they haven't built sidewalks in the center of the city yet. The city is designed for drivers.
Public transportation is passable here, but don't bet on it -- the city council, recognizing that the system of buses isn't working as well as some would like, recently decided to "fix" it by cutting lines and raising rates. How nice.
An exception to this urban blight can be found on 4th Avenue and in the downtown area. These are the old places of Tucson that have some character to them. You can walk around comfortably and soak up the homey atmosphere there. Not surprisingly, the city council views these areas as problematic and is trying to sanitize (read: JiffyLubize) them by removing benches and making loitering illegal.
One more reason for you not to move here -- we've sucked so much water out of the ground that the city is sinking, sewer pipes are breaking and foundations of houses are cracking. The Tucson basin needs fewer people, not more (yes, I'm moving out myself). If you must move here, please don't grow a lawn in your front yard -- it's wasteful of water and the pansies just look silly and out of place.
In Sum...
In sum, I strongly recommend Tucson as a place to visit and base your outdoors adventures. I also strongly recommend that you don't move here, unless you like to live in a ticky-tacky-strip-mall-wonderland-of-asphalt.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jamesmcook
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Member: James Cook
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Reviews written: 167
Trusted by: 40 members
About Me:
I am a father, writer and gregarious gadabout.
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