Tucson for the extended family

We spent all morning on a hike to get up close and personal with the towering saguaro cactuses. My young daughters imagined them as giant green cartoon characters, waving their arms to welcome us to the desert's natural amusement park. My wife tried fruitlessly to fit them neatly in an Instagram square on her iPhone.

In the afternoon, though, I couldn't get away from those annoying big-oaf prickly plants to save my life.

"You're lifting your head," my dad chastised me, as another of my golf balls limply thudded into the rough of Arizona National Golf Club. In this case, they truly mean "rough" — as in, you might get poked by a cactus or rattlesnake if you go fishing for your ball.

How could I not be lifting my head when I had the Tucson skyline to marvel at? Not the city skyline, mind you. Downtown Tucson is rather small compared with the sprawl around it, and a bit flat in the cultural department, too.

The view that swept us in was the mountain ranges and seas of saguaros that surround the southern Arizona city and make it a worthy winter getaway. Golf isn't usually on my vacation agenda, and Tucson has never been on any of my trip itineraries. But this was a different kind of family getaway. We had to vacation during the peak-travel week after Christmas or not go at all. That meant looking for somewhere cheap. Obviously, we wanted warm, too.

Tucson fit the bill to a T: reasonable, direct flights into Phoenix (two hours north); a $175/night high-end vacation rental house pressed right up against the Santa Catalina Mountains, and a week of mid-70s temperatures without a drop of anything. Ahhh.

We didn't want to leave our extended families in the lurch during the holidays, though, so we hung an "open" sign on the door. My dad came down from Minnesota and stayed for three nights, and then my father-in-law and his wife joined us from Texas the rest of the week.

It was welcome company, but also quite a test for Tucson's Welcome Wagon. The chamber of commerce probably couldn't have found a more disparate demographic group for a visitors' poll.

Fortunately, Tucson proved to have a little something for everyone.

The frequent flier

An ex-Navy pilot and airline captain, my wife's dad, Mike, already knew the Pima Air & Space Museum by name — and by firsthand experience — before we got to Tucson. The museum sits next to a massive military airfield known as the "boneyard," where retired planes go to die (which seems popular in Arizona). Mike had once flown a fighter plane all the way from Japan to the boneyard to end its service.

We didn't see that particular plane, but we saw what seemed like 10,000 others, from compact spy jets to giant bombers, all lined up in neat rows like monuments to wars past. The museum itself has a lot of rare aircraft you can get close to, including the world's smallest airplane and a bulky Air Force One used by Kennedy and Johnson. It made the trip for Mike. For me, it fit squarely in the things-I-never-thought-I'd-see category.

The snowbird golfer

The only thing my dad, Jim, flies is golf balls, and Tucson is certainly known for that. The metro area boasts 40 golf courses, from basic municipal options to the hoity-toity Jack Nicklaus-designed Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain.

We hit one of each. On the high end was Arizona National, where we took advantage of a late-afternoon special ($35 to play, instead of $99). The 6,785-yard course skirts the mountains and small canyons and throws in all kinds of desert scrub and hilly curves for obstacles, but the scenery is distracting enough to help keep cussing to a minimum. One of the nicer municipal courses, Dell Urich — in the city's central Randolph Park — was more straight and grassy but still challenging, with half the holes over 400 yards.

The princesses

My daughters, 2 and 6, will probably always remember Tucson (or at least the older one will) as the place they got to stare a rattlesnake in the eye and chase hummingbirds. They did both at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a cross between a zoo and botanical garden west of town, and a unique entrant in both departments. The Life Underground exhibit coolly shows you desert animals in burrow mode, including a Gila monster that looked surprisingly cuddly. The Hummingbird Aviary is so loaded with the flittering little nectar-seekers that I kept thinking I saw them out of the corner of my eye after we left the aviary.

And then there's the Children's Museum Tucson, which our aficionado girls rated one of their favorites. Housed in a former Carnegie Library downtown, its impressive setting still takes a back seat to exhibits that are truly engaging — like the giant human-body display that allows you to play with ear wax and snot. Oh, fer fun.

The spa queen

Spas are another trademark of Tucson, and you can be sure my wife knew that going in. She intended to drive up to the Oprah-endorsed Miraval Arizona Resort but didn't want to make the nearly hourlong drive to its remote location after already spending a lot of time in the car (Tucson is devoid of efficient roads).

Predictably, though, she was able to find an equally expensive one closer to town: Lowes Ventana Canyon, where the "lakeside" spa — not a natural lake, of course — has an oasis feel with mountain views. My wife got the signature Sedona Sacred Ritual ($185), which involves a massage, salt scrub and mud wrap made up of local desert botanicals. She raved afterward about how great the mud smelled. I wish I were making that up.

My wife's other destination of choice was the Hotel Congress, a historic downtown landmark with colorful Aztec-style décor. I knew the hotel for its namesake music club, housed in a small and rustic old ballroom (Minneapolis rocker Mark Mallman told me it's one of his favorite places to play). Gangster lore knows it as the place John Dillinger was caught. We learned it's also an awesome place for brunch. Its casually cool Cup Café served rich and thick huevos rancheros and a savory brisket-and-egg sandwich that proved to be our favorite meal of the trip.

The happy hiker

There's nothing like having mountain hiking trails just up the street. Our house at the northern end of town was just downhill from Coronado National Forest and the road up to Mount Lemmon, a popular (and even snowy) mountain getaway for Tucsonans. There are excellent trails all the way up the mountain.

My favorite hike was the Soldier Trail, a 2.6-mile steep climb around giant boulders and Soldier Canyon that winds up at the site of a former prison camp. I perfectly timed it so that my view on the way back down — with waking bats squeaking all around me — was sunset across the vast Tucson Basin. It's at least a good-looking city from high above.

The whole group

For once, I wasn't the only one eager to take in the natural scenery on this trip. The whole family took a trek up to Sabino Canyon, about 20 minutes north of downtown, where Disney World-like tram shuttles take you deep up into a mountain vein and can let you off at various stopping points along the way. We took a 1½-mile hike through saguaro-adorned washes that was as beautiful as the tougher solo treks I did.

Speaking of saguaros, there's a national park named after the gangly cactuses right on the edge of Tucson city limits — actually on two edges of town, east and west. Saguaro National Park is split into two sections, and both offer a wide variety of easy nature loops, challenging hiking and ranger-run activities. The west is the best (and just a hop-skip from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum). But the east side is where my 6-year-old had the most fun courtesy of the Junior Ranger checklist book, a good reminder to all of us that there's a lot more to see in the desert than meets the eye.

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658