South and North Honeybee Trails

I've been trying to motivate myself to hike more short hikes—under 6-7 miles—as a way to fill in during the week to take the place of my boring old repetitive walks. Perhaps hikes that sweeten the pot by providing an interesting destination, geologic formation, or flora or fauna. 

Today I headed up to the Honey Bee Canyon Park and combined the two Honeybee trails, the Honeybee Loop Trail to the south, and the Honeybee North out-and-back trail for a blistering total of four miles. But these two trails had some interesting elements to make them worth the effort: human artifacts from disparate historical eras. The first, on the Honeybee South Loop Trail, is a dam (never a good environmental idea) from perhaps the beginning of the 20th century or the end of the 19th; the second—and to my way of thinking much more interesting—are the Hohokom petroglyphs on the North Honeybee Trail, from around 500 CE, or so it is surmised. The Hohokum people lived in the Tucson area from around 1 CE to their disappearance around 1,500 CE. 

Perfect weather once again, 73º and a slight wind, with clear skies. Saw one two people on the south loop, and no one on the northern segment.

Most of this hike was in the Sausalito Creek wash, so sandy with few rocks to hike over.

Someone thought it prudent to dam up this beautiful

canyon some dozen decades ago.

This is what lay beyond the dam.

There is another newer dam on the north trail, a few hundred yards before the petroglyphs that are this trail's raison d'ê·tre.

Hohokum petroglyphs.

The mountain ridge in the background captures the quiddity of the Santa Catalina Range, of which it is a part.