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The bike tour ends - Sabino Canyon
The morning following our final ride of the bike tour, we met early to catch our shuttles up to Sabino Canyon, where we would ride the sightseeing tram up and down the canyon, before our shuttle took us to the airport to end our tour. In order to avoid delays that might cause people to miss their flights home, the hotel prepared carry-out breakfast for us, which we ate in our room as we finished our packing and got ready for the day. We then carried our luggage out to be loaded, and boarded our shuttle.
Sabino Canyon Recreation Area is part of the Coronado National Forest, and is accessed on a out-and-back roadway up into the canyon. While you can walk up the road (and it appears that many people do), you also can buy tickets for the tram tour, which allows you to hop on and off the tram at a number of stops along the road. The tram is a zero-emission electric vehicle, with open-air cars and a headset audio narration. The entire ride up the valley and back took about an hour. Because of our schedule, we didn't have time to hop off at any of the stops and explore, which is a shame because it appeared that there was plenty of exploring that could have been done. This is another place we need to come back and spend more time at.
But even just riding the tram up and back was stunning. The road follows the Sabino Creek along the bottom of the canyon, so that we found water and greenery here inside this desert. But beyond the valley floor, the steep sides of the canyon hosted a forest of saguaro cacti, remining us that this valley is an oasis in an otherwise harsh environment.

After our tram tour was completed, we re-boarded our shuttles for the ride back to the airport, the end of our packaged tour. We said farewell to everyone from the group, made our way back to the car and spent the rest of the day driving north, through Phoenix, and on towards Page, Arizona (with a stop in Sedona, one of our favorite places in that part of the country, for dinner), where we would spend the next couple of nights.