Sabino Canyon

Truly the butterflies are amazing. We went for a walk to see the flooding at Sabino Creek and butterflies were everywhere! I’ve never seen so many butterflies in my entire life. They were denser than in an enclosed butterfly exhibit at a botanical garden! Turns out I’m not very good at taking pictures of butterflies so you can’t really tell in the pictures. But here’s what you can tell: everything is so green it’s unreal!

These pictures were taken from trails near the Sabino Canyon Visitor’s Center, which is right on the edge of town, only a 15 minute drive from our house.

It doesn’t look hot in this picture, but it was actually quite hot. I’m covered from head to toe because butterflies aren’t the only flying insects that have suddenly appeared in the normally bug-less desert! I’m not a fan of bugs. Which is one of the main reasons I’ve chosen to live in the desert all these years. Usually there’s no bugs! But not this year. Record breaking monsoon rains have brought out the bugs.

It sure is beautiful though.

And ridiculously green.

In this next picture I was trying to take pictures of the swarms of butterflies. You can sort of pick out a few spots of yellow. The experience was really well beyond what I was able to capture on camera.

Sabino Creek, flooding:

Floodwaters pouring over the road:

Barrel cactus blooming:

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