The Loop - Tucson

In this episode, The Huckleberry Loop . . .

Last week we spoke about a BIG world just waiting to be explored. Well, Christmas week 2021, we extended our exploration while planning for 2022. We loaded up our truck for some vacation time and headed for Tucson, AZ.

"Why Tucson?" you ask?

The Huckleberry Loop, of course.

The Chuck Huckleberry Loop is a system of paved, shared-use paths and short segments of bicycle (bike) lanes connecting the Cañada del Oro, Rillito, Santa Cruz, and Pantano River Parks with Julian Wash and Harrison Road Greenway in Tucson. It totals about 137 miles of beautifully paved pathways. The Loop stretches more than 45 miles north to south and almost 30 miles east to west. Some 70% of the Loop directly follows the banks of five significant watersheds that dominate the Tucson Valley.

Since the late 1980s, Tucson has been building this series of bicycle trails in conjunction with flood control waterways that circumnavigate the city.

"The Loop" (as it's known) became a reality in January of 2018 when Pima County, AZ. completed a connection of five of the six Loop trail sections that form an elongated circle around the city of Tucson.

It's a 53.9-mile circuit, and completing it in one day is known to the locals as "Looping the Loop." According to local author and bicyclist of the book The Loop - Americas #1 Recreational Trail, "Doing so requires a little local knowledge since it requires crossing back and forth across riverbeds several times to avoid backtracking."

We stayed at the Hilton Homewood Suites off North Campbell. It has a large parking lot with a friendly local Pedego bicycle shop and direct access to the trail. The staff there will be happy to provide you with maps and advice on avoiding backtracking while completing the Loop.

The Loop extends through unincorporated Pima County, Marana, Oro Valley, Tucson, and South Tucson. The connections result from Pima County's cooperative partnerships with these jurisdictions.

This network of trails connects public parks, hiking trailheads, bus and bike routes, workplaces, restaurants, schools, hotels and motels, shopping areas, and entertainment venues. Visitors and Pima County residents can enjoy the Loop on foot, bikes, skates, and horses.

There is one section, as of 2021, not yet completed, a 1.3-mile segment of surface streets with a wide bike lane along Rita Road.

We completed the 54 miles "Loop the Loop" in about 5 hours. As you cruise the pristine pavement, you may come upon an electric golf cart; these are friendly maintenance crew members that keep debris off the trail, the restrooms clean, and are always willing to answer questions you may have along the way. We thoroughly recommend it to anyone. What a wonderful experience.

So, get out there and explore!

I'm Patrick Ball; thanks for listening; I'll see you in the next episode.

Comments

Don Hanley said…

Good essay and I wish I had known about these kind of trails years ago. Would you and Lori have invited a couple of teens you knew join you and do you think they would enjoy it? Thanks, Don Hanley

January 10, 2022 at 2:48 PM

The Gopher Problem and the High Powered Solution

Vacationing in Maine this week, just a short drive down the coast from Freeport, it is hard not to think about the outsized impact one frustrated outdoorsman had on the gear we all use today. Bad equipment can ruin a perfectly good day on the water or the trail, but it takes a special kind of vision to turn cold feet into a century-old empire. This is the story of the company we now know as L.L.Bean, but more importantly, it is a masterclass in integrity, learning from failure, and standing behind your work. In 1912, Leon Leonwood Bean faced a persistent problem: returning from expeditions in the Maine woods with cold, wet feet. Instead of complaining, he got creative. He had a local shoemaker stitch waterproof rubber soles onto the flexible leather uppers of a hunting boot. He called it the Maine Hunting Shoe and mailed a flyer promising perfect satisfaction. Then reality arrived. Ninety of his first 100 pairs failed when the rubber separated from the leather. Not an effective product...

On Becoming Real

Some things get better with wear: old shoes, old friendships, and old books. Especially old books. A new volume arrives with crisp corners and a spine that hasn’t yet learned to bend. An old one has been somewhere. It has traveled through time in the hands of people who may no longer be around to tell us what they found inside. The copy of The Velveteen Rabbit (first published in 1922) on my desk is one of those books. My friend Don Hanley gave it to me. This late-1950s Doubleday edition features William Nicholson’s original illustrations and cream paper boards softened by age. Worn corners, a split spine, and colored tabs mark passages worth revisiting. Don didn’t hand me a keepsake. He gave me homework. When we talked about the book recently, he pointed me straight to the nursery conversation between a young rabbit and an old Skin Horse. The rabbit had noticed the mechanical toys around him—the ones with internal gears, bright paint, and stick-out handles that seem terribly impressiv...

A Dog, a Beer . . . and the Ghost of 1912

Whenever you step into an American cathedral of our National Pastime built before modern ergonomics, municipal zoning, or crowd-flow dynamics, an unspoken understanding forms, creating a welcoming, timeless atmosphere. You trade legroom, sensible corridors, and personal space for the privilege of communing with ghosts. Last week, Lori and I made our pilgrimage to Fenway Park to watch our Chicago Cubs take on the Boston Red Sox (a taut 0–2 contest that felt spiritually tied to their 1918 World Series meeting). Staying just across the Charles River at the Courtyard Marriott in Cambridge gave us one immeasurable tactical advantage: we walked. While the automotive gridlock around Kenmore Square took on the character of the Siege of Yorktown—horns echoing across the asphalt like musket fire—we simply strolled across the Boston University Bridge, enjoying the river breeze and feeling smugly superior to everyone trapped behind a steering wheel. Fenway, built in the spring of 1912, holds rough...

Stamps and Snow

In this episode, Stamps and Snow . . . You don’t usually walk into the local Post Office expecting a time warp . . . but here we are. All we wanted were stamps for this year's Christmas cards— yes, the old-fashioned paper ones that require licking, sticking, and hoping the Postal Service is feeling ambitious this week. But holiday errands have a talent for slowing you down, almost like the universe whispering, “Relax. You’re not getting out of this line any faster anyway.” So we waited. And while we waited, we talked (Are you surprised?). Because the Post Office is one of the few places where people still look up from their phones long enough to talk . . . Maybe it's because they're holding packages. It’s the modern town square: part civic duty, part free entertainment, part sociology experiment. The discussion began with holiday specials streaming on Netflix, Paramount+, and other services during this time of year. One gentleman who has lived in Vista since 1958 told us,...

On The Fly

Search This Blog