A one day itinerary for Saguaro National Park
The Saguaro National Park sign at the west entrance to the park.
Saguaro National Park, located near Tucson, Arizona, is home to the worlds largest forest of saguaro cacti. If you want to see all the national park has to offer, here’s a one day itinerary that worked really well for us! We didn’t even need to get to the park super early!
We started the day at the Red Hills visitor center where we got our stamp for the passport book. If you go to a lot of national parks, it’s a fun way to keep track of which ones you’ve been to! Most national park visitor centers sell it in their shop.
Aside from the shop you can also learn a lot about the landscape and wildlife contained within Saguaro National Park. If you don’t like reptiles or spiders, this might not be the park for you. There is some non-coldblooded wildlife such as javelinas, deer, and coyotes but you’re much more likely to see the creepy crawlies. We managed to avoid all the snakes and spiders and only came across lizards, and lots of birds.
Make sure to use the restrooms and fill up your water bottles here as there is not much in the way of facilities in the park itself.
Stop 1: Cactus Trail & Javelina Wash Trail
Behind the visitor center is the cactus trail which is a short, paved trail that will take you through some cactus gardens and introduce you to multiple species of cactus including saguaro, barrel, prickly pear, and cholla. Obviously be sure to only look and not touch. Down a short slope you’ll find the Javelina Wash trail which is also a short trail but this one is gravel.
Stop 2: Desert Discovery Nature Trail
Another short trail just off the side of the main road, the desert discovery nature trail is a 0.5 loop trail that will have you walking amongst many a saguaro cactus. Make sure to look for holes in the saguaros that indicate a cactus wren might have made a nest inside.
Stop 3: Valley View Overlook Trail
This trail is a 0.8 mile out and back that will take you across a river bed and up a slope to a sweeping view out over the Avra Valley. We saw a lot of birds on this trail and some kind of giant flying insect that we couldn’t identify. The views from the overlook are beautiful on a clear day.
Stop 4: Signal Hill Trail
This is the first non cactus related trail we did. A short hike with a set of stairs takes you to the top of signal hill where you can see dozen’s of petroglyphs on the rocks. You can get really close to them but please stay on the trail, behind the fence and don’t touch them. The oils on our hands will erode the petroglyphs if we do.
Some of the petroglyphs you can see on Signal Hill.
Signal Hill was our last stop on the West side of the park. We drove over Gates Pass into Tucson where we had some lunch before driving on to the east side of the park.
Stop 5: Rincon Visitor Center
This visitor center isn’t as bad as the one on the west side but it still has a store, some information about the park and restrooms. Don’t forget to fill your water again!
Stop 6: Mica View Loop
We started out to do this 2 mile loop trail and then somehow got turned around and ended up going back the way we started making it an out-and-back for us. We did get to see a bunch of roadrunners though so that was really cool to see.
Stop 7: Desert Ecology Trail
Our final stop in the park was the desert ecology trail which is a 0.25 mile loop paved trail that offers a series of interpretive signs explaining what you can see. A great accessible trail.
I think we got into the park just after 9am and left our last stop just after 4pm. We were outside of the park for lunch for about an hour. We didn’t do any of the longer hikes but we felt like we got to see most of the park in one day which was unfortunately all the time we had, which is why we prioritized seeing more.
Saguaro National Park is an easily accessible park that offers great views of forests os saguaro cacti, as well as wildlife encounters if you are patient. Check out our video of our time at Saguaro National Park in the video below!