Tucson East to West~Letterboxing

Yesterday we created a game plan to start at the far east-side of Tucson below the Rincon Mtns., on Speedway Blvd, then drive all the way across Tucson to the Tucson Mtns. at the far Western edge of Tucson. All the way along, hunting for letterboxes of course!

Our first stop found the "Speedway" letterbox near the Tanque Verde Ranch. This area is at the edge of The Saguaro National Forest (Eastside)Our second stop was at the Agua Caliente Park, a bit north of Speedway. We've been here before to explore and find a letterbox, but somehow we had missed one of the letterboxes placed here in this beautiful little oasis in NE Tucson. We found our quarry, stamped and logged in, and headed back to Speedway.
Walking through the Mesquite tree tunnel.
On the way we stopped off at the Himmel neighborhood Park to find a newly planted letterbox called "Ben's Bells". This box has a sad, but inspirational story and was placed in dedication of a family's little boy who died several years ago. For more on Ben's Bells The letterbox held an adorable hand-carved stamp was a replica of a Ben's Bell. (I didn't take any photos here, because its just a little playground park and a drive-by letterbox.

Afterwards, we decided to attempt to find the Santa Cruz letterbox, which first needed a translation from Spanish to English. Unfortunately the translation must have gotten muddled, because the BabelFish Translator told us to keep an eye out for the place of the "Flying Frisbee" (Which in real life happened to be a football field.) Then we got further confused by it's explanation of pedestrian path vs the bike path we kept traveling on. And then how we were to travel across a bridge, but in real life there weren't any (only the bridge we traveled under!)The temps were at least 100 degrees and after all the walking we finally gave up to continue our westward journey. (And of course, there was no river, not even a stream, in the parched dry riverbed beside the Santa Cruz River Walk!)
After we left the Santa Cruz 'Riverwalk', we headed west across Gates Pass and into The Saguaro National Park (Westside), and soon came to our next letterbox trek: "C is for Cougar". An easy find and a beautiful hand-carved cougar stamp. The only snafu that happened was how I somehow left my keys back at the letterbox location, so we had to hike back to get them back. It gave us the opportunity to visit with the majestic Saguaros some more
After leaving "C is for Cougar" letterbox, we headed a little further west to find the "Coati Corner" letterbox, another super easy trek and unique hand-carved coati stamp, too!
We even snuck in a Saguaro Hug! We love Saguaros!!!