the Cost of Walking Tours

The service included access to and walking tours of historical movie sets (of the old west variety) turned theme park, and the local botanical gardens and natural history museum, both in the same day. It is priced per person, "one" being the number of people the above price pays for.

The company also offers accommodations at local bed and breakfasts and tours of other regional points of historic or aesthetic interest, including leaded forest hikes up on Mt. Lemmon.

It was the tail end of summer and my grandparents came down form Canada to visit and spend time in Tucson. Mostly the latter since they'd made plans around the fact I'd be busy most of the time.

We did have time to go to dinner most nights they were in town and we did go on the tours of .

How was it? It was a tour. It's designed for tourists so as a local it was pretty boring and since I'd lived in the area for a while, I was having difficulty resisting the pull to share sordid details to the group about the events described by the guide, along with other pieces of local color, like the Speedway Strangler, our local and long-deceased serial killer.

If you're a tourist, realize that you're going to be lumped in with other tourists and will be getting a sanitized version of life wherever you are when you take tours. If you like that sort of thing, great, but if not, do as the locals do and get a copy of the free weekly newspaper (available in big red boxes everywhere around Tucson, particularly downtown). You'll find out much better what's going on, what there is to do, and where the great restaurants are much more cheaply than contracting with a tour guide. You won't miss not seeing staged gunfights. They rarely happened in the old west, anyway.