The Sundowner is ideally located at the base of the beautiful Huachuca Mountains in Southern Arizona. There are endless activities and some of the country’s best hiking, bird watching and much more.
Ramsey Canyon Nature Conservancy: www.southernarizonatourplanner.com/ Located Ramsey Canyon Road off of Hwy 92 to the west. Hiking and bird watching available as well as a book and gift shop.
The Carr House: Located in Carr Canyon with information on butterflies, fauna, birds, and hiking in the Huachuca Canyons and trails.
Mark Pretti Nature Tours: Mark Pretti Nature Tours offers high quality trips with exceptional birding and natural history education in southeast Arizona and Latin America. My interests go well beyond birds and include everything in the natural world. My outings include stories not just about birds, but also about plants, insects, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, basic geology, and general ecology. As we all know, ecological relationships are abundant and fascinating, and my approach to guiding is to not only find and identify species, but to also tell you about their unique natural history and the connections they have with their neighbors. I find that this not only helps clients remember the species we see, but it also puts nature into a meaningful context and gives people a true understanding of what makes a particular habitat, whether it’s the Sierra Madre or lowland Amazonian rainforest, tick. Mark Pretti lives near the Sundowner property and can be hired (schedule dependent) to take MIL house guests on local tours in the area and find the bird you are dying to see.
San Pedro Riparian Area: The San Pedro River is one of a few rivers that runs north in the United States. The BLM manages the area. It is an important and necessary desert river and cottonwood tree forest. It provides resting, feeding and breeding places for migrating birds.
Friends of the San Pedro River: The San Pedro House Books & Gifts is located close to the Sundowner at 9800 Hwy. 90 at the River and is open daily from 9:30a.m. – 4:30p.m. The friends offer guided walks, hikes, and trail rides, including a weekly interpretive walk from San Pedro House that starts at 8 am from 1 April through 30 September and at 9 am from 1 October through 31 March.
SABO: The Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory is a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of the birds of southeastern Arizona, their habitats and the diversity of species that share those habitats through research, monitoring and public education.
Sierra Vista Wetlands Birding Area:This area is an excellent place for seeing water birds. The sewage ponds were converted into a wonderful wetland for birds.
Huachuca Mountain Hiking Trails: The Huachucas, south of Sierra Vista, present many hiking possibilities and some very scenic drives. Trails climb from all sides of the range to Miller Peak Wilderness. The Huachucas are right outside your door at the Sundowner.
Kartchner Caverns: Experience a stunning limestone cave in Southeastern Arizona that boasts world-class features. This “live” cave, discovered in 1974, is host to a wide variety of unique minerals and formations. Water percolates from the surface and calcite formations continue to grow, including stalactites dripping down like icicles and giant stalagmites reaching up from the ground. Tour guides will unveil this fascinating underground landscape during a memorable 1½ hour tour. The Discovery Center features museum exhibits, a large gift shop, regional displays, theater, and educational information about the caverns and the surrounding landscape. There are also campgrounds, hiking trails, lockers, shaded picnic areas, a deli, an amphitheater, and a hummingbird garden.
Tombstone, Arizona: “The Town too Tough to Die,” Tombstone was perhaps the most renowned of Arizona’s old mining camps. When Ed Schieffelin (SHEF·e·lin) came to Camp Huachuca (hwah·CHEW·kuh) with a party of soldiers and left the fort to prospect, his comrades told him that he’d find his tombstone rather than silver. Thus, in 1877 Schieffelin named his first claim the Tombstone, and rumors of rich strikes made a boomtown of the settlement that adopted this name.
Bisbee, Arizona: In 1877 a reconnaissance detail of army scouts and cavalrymen was sent to the Mule Mountains to search the area for renegade Apaches. What civilian tracker Jack Dunn found instead were signs of mineralization indicating the presence of lead, copper and possibly silver. The first mining claim was staked in what would later become the City of Bisbee. The filing of this claim, and a multitude of others filed by George Warren, sent prospectors and speculators scurrying to the Mule Mountains in hopes of striking it rich. Numerous rich ore bodies were located and Bisbee soon became known as the “Queen of the Copper Camps”
