Here are three key considerations for everyone considering what pickleball paddle to purchase.

#1 Price. Good composite pickleball paddles start at $50. There are three categories of paddles – wood prices range from $13-$36, composite from $45-$145 and graphite from $60 – $145. Note on wood paddles – Wood paddles are the least expensive, however they are super heavy paddles with a solid plywood core. They don’t provide the wonderful pickleball POP that players love. After playing with the wood paddles and testing out other players’ composite paddles players quickly change to a composite or graphite paddle. If you’re new to pickleball and looking for your first paddle, go for an inexpensive composite or graphite paddle right away.

SaddleBrooke Ranch Golf Community Course Construction Updates:

• The golf course and practice facility greens surfaces will be replaced with Mini-Verde in a process that will overlap this spring and summer. The process will take approximately 5 months to complete. Annual golfers will receive a refund of the fees for those 5 months in the sum of $1,100. On Monday, May 3rd, Annuals were be suspended and may play the course with temporary greens paying a green fee. Green fees will be reduced while temporary greens are being used. Suspended annuals will pay $10 and residents will pay $15. Chelsea points will stay as they are. In October when the new greens are ready, all suspended annuals will be restored; and green fees will revert to posted rates.
• Monday, May 3rd we converted to all 18 holes having temporary greens. This will last until the new greens are grown in and ready for play. We expect the greens will be ready by the first of October. This date is variable due to weather conditions. Temp green course yardages are posted on Chelsea in a printable format. Most holes will play an average of 50 yards shorter. A spreadsheet with the changes for each hole is posted in printable form on your Chelsea home page.
• During the course of the summer the fairways will be aerified 2-3 times and will also be heavily top dressed with sand.
• Speaking of sand, the practice green bunker has been reshaped giving it a more greenside appearance, while also helping keep sand off of the green. The range field end will still allow for fairway bunker style shots out onto the range field. All the sand was removed while the bunker was reshaped, so it now has completely fresh sand as well!
• On May 12th the re-sloped area on #16 fairway was sodded to about 80%. The remaining 20% was sodded on Friday, May 14th, along with the tees on #16, #18, #3, and the remaining Golf tees. The drainage work areas were also sodded. Finally, the collars on greens #1-9 were sodded. On May 24th and 25th, the front nine greens were sprigged and the collars on the back nine greens and practice greens were sodded. The back nine greens and practice greens are expected to be sprigged during the second week of June.
• Once all the greens have been sprigged, the construction crew will leave. Our maintenance crew will then continue the grow-in process and also continue restoring the fairway and rough surfaces. We hope to improve the fairways and rough areas enough to allow them to be good dormant playing surfaces this winter.

Courtesy of the Golf Caddie

Website:

Welcome to SaddleBrooke Ranch Golf Club!

Fort Lowell played a pivotal role during the Apache providing additional protection for the Tucson area. Far too large and well-manned to be attacked directly, Fort Lowell provided supplies and manpower for outlying military installations. During its eighteen years of operation, the fort averaged thirteen officers and 239 enlisted men. Among the units present during this period were the 2^nd, 4^th, 5th and 6^th Cavalry Regiments, as well as the 1^st, 8^th, and 12^th Infantry Regiments.

The orientation of the post was set according to magnetic north. It featured a large parade grounds, officers’ quarters, quartermaster and commissary storehouses, corrals, quarters for enlisted men as well as for married non-commissioned officers. The most prominent building on post was the hospital, the adobe remnants of which still stand under a protective structure. A lane lined with cottonwood trees, aptly named Cottonwood Lane, graced the area in front of the officers’ houses.

Among the more well-known officers to have served at Fort Lowell were the young Walter Reed, the Army physician famous for his yellow fever research, and Charles Bendire, the amateur ornithologist after whom Bendire’s Thrasher is named.

After the Army decommissioned the post in 1891, Mexican families from Sonora soon moved north to take advantage of the free housing. This occupation has become known as the El Fuerte Period.

Located on the site of the historic Porter property, Reader’s Digest named Tucson Botanical Gardens as the BEST Secret Garden in America. Among mature trees and expertly cultivated foliage, specialty gardens such as the Cactus & Succulent Garden, Barrio Garden and Herb Garden highlight the diversity of native plants while offering a lush oasis in the heart of Tucson. Tropical butterflies from around the world are featured in the Cox Butterfly & Orchid Pavilion Oct.–May. Experience year-round tours, community events, classes, and art exhibits, as well as the creative, seasonal menu of Café Botanica. Now celebrating 40 years of living beauty, The Tucson Botanical Gardens is a unique gem not to be missed.

Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), supports the most diverse collection of astronomical observatories on Earth for nighttime optical and infrared astronomy and daytime study of the Sun. Sharing the mountaintop site with the National Solar Observatory, KPNO, founded in 1958, operates three major nighttime telescopes and hosts the facilities of consortia which operate 22 optical telescopes and two radio telescopes. (See the Tenant Observatories list.) Kitt Peak is located 56 miles southwest of Tucson, AZ, in the Schuk Toak District on the Tohono O’odham Nation and has a Visitor Center open daily to the public however it is temporarily closed.

Oracle State Park is a 4,000-acre wildlife refuge in the northern Catalina Mountains. The park offers day-use picnic areas and over 15 miles of trails for use by hikers, mountain bikers, and equestrians. A section of the Arizona Trail crosses through the park.  And it is a designated International Darek Sky Park.

Oracle State Park also serves as a Center for Environmental Education and provides programming for all ages. Interactive programs for school groups are offered by reservation. These programs are conducted along trails, so students learn about habitat ands interrelationships between plants, animals, and people.

The Kannally Ranch was donated to The Defenders of Wildlife (DOW), a non-profit organization, in 1976. The will of Lucille Kannally gave the 4000-acre ranch to DOW with the stipulation that the property be perpetually used as a wildlife reserve. The DOW held this property (called the Oracle Wildlife Refuge) for ten years. For most of the time, the Oracle Education Project, under the leadership of Bob Hernbrode, utilized the Kannally Ranch House as its base of operation for a variety of environmental education programs.

Neil Kannally left his home in Illinois in 1902, seeking sunshine at a tuberculosis health resort in the hills of Oracle, 38 miles north of downtown Tucson.

As he grew stronger, Kannally, 23, hatched a plan to bring out his brother, Lee. In 1903, the two purchased the 1880s McCarius homestead on 160 acres of pristine land once inhabited by Hohokam and Apaches, a perfect spot for cattle ranching.

Three other siblings — 30-year-old matriarch Molly, brother Vincent and 7-year-old Lucile — soon followed, and the thriving cattle ranch grew to nearly 50,000 acres.

The old adobe homestead was surely cramped, so the brothers added on to the original house, and later built cottages for Molly and Lucy.

It was not until 1929 that this second-generation Irish Catholic family built an architectural jewel of a ranch house in the heart of what is now Oracle State Park, a dramatic, four-level Mediterranean-Revival style home with Moorish influences, patterned after Italianate villas of the 1920s.

By the 1950s, the family sold off much of the land — including what would become the town of San Manuel — to Magma Copper Co.

The Kannallys, who lived in the home the remainder of their days and never married or had children, are long gone, buried at Holy Hope Cemetery. Gone, too, are family historical records, destroyed at the request of the family upon the death of the last surviving Kannally, Lucy (Lucille), who died in 1976 at age 78.

Tombstone is a historic city in Cochise County, Arizona founded in 1877 by a prospector in what was then Pima County, Arizona Territory. It became one of the last boomtowns in the American frontier. The town grew significantly into the mid-1880s as the local mines produced $40 to $85 million in silver bullion, the largest productive silver district in Arizona. Its population grew from 100 to around 14,000 in less than seven years. It is best known as the site of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and presently draws most of its revenue from tourism.

Under the surface in the mining town were tensions that grew into deadly conflict. The mining capitalists and the townspeople were largely Republicans from the Northern states. Many of the ranchers (some of whom were also rustlers or other criminal varieties) were Confederate sympathizers and Democrats. The booming city was only 30 miles (48 km) from the U.S.–Mexico border and was an open market for cattle stolen from ranches in Sonora, Mexico, by a loosely organized band of outlaws known as The Cowboys. The Earp brothers as well as Doc Holliday, arrived in December 1879 and mid-1880. The Earps had ongoing conflicts with the Cowboys. The Cowboys repeatedly threatened the Earps over many months until the conflict escalated into a shootout on October 26, 1881, the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Tucson, Arizona is home to the nation’s largest cacti. The giant saguaro is the universal symbol of the American west. These majestic plants, found only in a small portion of the United States, are protected by Saguaro National Park, to the east and west of the modern city of Tucson. In 1994, Saguaro National Park was designated to help protect this species and its habitat.  Here you have a chance to see these enormous cacti, silhouetted by the beauty of a magnificent desert sunset.  The saguaro is a tree-like cactus species that can grow to be over 12 meters tall.  It is native to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, the Mexican state of Sonora, and the Whipple Mountains and Imperial County areas of California.  The saguaro blossom is the state wildflower of Arizona.  The cactus proliferates over 4000 feet in elevation.

Saguaros have a relatively long lifespan, often exceeding 150 years.  They may grow their first side arm around 75-100 years of age, but some never grow any arms.  Arms are developed to increase the plant’s reproductive capacity.

A saguaro can absorb and store considerable amounts of rain water, visibly expanding in the process, while slowly using the stored as needed during times of drought.

A visit to Saguaro National Park is well worth the time to see these iconic plants of the West