hiking in Tucson

How One Boomer Became a Trail Guide

Published December 11, 2018 | By Clark Norton

The Grand Canyon taught Mitch a hard-earned lesson in trail guiding.

One of our frequent contributors to clarknorton.com, my friend Mitch Stevens, is kicking off our occasional series of first-person pieces on how various baby boomers got started traveling for a living.

Mitch’s odyssey led him from summer camp in Pennsylvania to the depths of the Grand Canyon to college field trips in Wyoming and eventually to Tucson in the (mostly) sunny deserts of southern Arizona, where’s he’s been leading Sierra Club hikes for years and more recently founded his adventure travel company Southwest Discoveries.

Like the intrepid cyclists who compete in the 100-mile El Tour de Tucson race each fall, Mitch’s long-distance hikes through the canyons and across the mountains of the Southwest provide inspiration to me as I sit here at my computer giving my typing fingers a thorough workout.

So lace up your hiking boots, grab… Continue reading →

Spring in Tucson: Desert in Bloom

Published March 1, 2018 | By Clark Norton

The desert in bloom viewed along Tucson’s Agua Caliente Hill trail.

We’ve finally had a touch of winter here in Tucson, where temperatures reached into the high 80s in early February and it felt like summer back east.

At the end of February, while cooling rains pelted the parched city, snow fell atop 9,147-foot Mt. Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains just north of Tucson. Mt Lemmon is the site of the southernmost ski area in the United States. (Temperatures at the summit can turn 30 degrees colder than those in the city, which sits some 7,000 feet below.)

That’s good news for Tucson hikers and anyone who values the surprisingly rich life of the desert. With refreshing spring rains, dry creek beds turn into gushing waterfalls, wildflowers bloom and hikers and picnickers flock to newly lush surroundings.

As I write in my book 100 Things to Do in Tucson Before… Continue reading →

Posted in Arizona, Baby boomer travel, Hiking, Tucson | Tagged Arizona, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, hiking in Tucson, Mt. Lemmon, Sabino Canyon, Saguaro National Park, Sonora Desert, Southwest Discoveries, Tucson, Tucson hikes | 2 Comments

According to government and private surveys:

Leading-edge baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1955) and seniors account for four out of every five dollars spent on luxury travel today.
Roughly half the consumer spending money in the U.S.--more than $2 trillion--is in the hands of leading-edge baby boomers and seniors.
Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) travel more than any other age group.
When asked what they would most like to spend their money on, baby boomers answered “travel” more than any other category, including improving their health or finances.