Alamo Canyon Loop Trail & Romero Ruins

Had a little over an hour to kill this morning and needed to shake the Miller Peak dust off my hiking boots and replace it with new dust from the Catalinas. My friend Jack also needed to, as he put it, “get off my arse”. So we headed over to Catalina State park (12 minutes using petrochemicals), parked near the Alamo Canyon Trail trailhead, and knocked out the short 3.2 miler in under an hour, then decided to check out the tiny lariat-loop Romero Ruins hike just to get our mileage up a bit and learn a little archaeology. 

Beautiful day and many other bipeds out in gaggles and herds, as might be expected on a holiday. Scary nice weather, over 60° at the trailhead at 10:45, rising to the mid-seventies an hour later. Nothing says Christmas more than 77 degrees Fahrenheit, which is tomorrow's forecast. Christ (who was, incidentally, not born in December but in February or thereabouts; the Romans, after adopting Christianity around 306 CE, under emperor Constantine the Great, moved Jesus' birthday to coincide with the holiday celebrating the Roman sun God, Sol Invictus). It's a little known fact.

The actual Alamo Canyon, into which we would shortly descend.

The grand staircase up to Romero Ruins.