Sitting at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains just north of Tucson, Catalina State Park is a great campground! If you like outdoors activities, this area is like a playground. We settled into one of the sites without water or electricity, but most of the sites do have those services.

Yesterday I took a 8.5 mile hike from our site up to (and beyond) Romero Pools on the Romero Canyon Trail. This is a decent hike – there is climbing, as you go from about 2,700 feet elevation to over 3,700 feet elevation, and it is fairly steep.

The day before we traveled up the Sky Island Scenic Byway which is simply a stunning drive. The views are breathtaking as you drive on windy roads past 8,000 feet elevation. Because of this climb, you see multiple environments, from desert and forests of saguaros, to multiple hoodoos, to forests of firs, pines and spruce. We had snow once we passed about 7,000 feet, and saw temperatures drop 30-40 degrees from the base to the top at Mount Lemmon.