There are interesting sights on both sides.
Note that the Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle goes through a part of the southwestern US that features
Basin and Range topography.
As long as the train is on time sunrise will be at the same time your train is leaving Maricopa, AZ.
You will be in the Sonoran Desert until you get east of Benson, AZ.
A little over 25 miles out of Maricopa the train will go under Interstate 10 and stay fairly close to I-10 for most of the day.
Twenty miles further
Picacho Peak (3400 ft) &
State Park will be on the
right. If they have a good rainy winter there will be lots of wildflowers in mid-March.
During the Civil War the Battle of Picacho was fought there on April 15, 1862.
There's a small flat spot on top of the peak that can be reached via two trails. Parts of each trail are precarious so cables and catwalks got added at some point for hikers trying the trails. That makes the trails 2 of the few via ferrata in the United States.
Out the
left side of the train the you will see the
Tortolita Mountains and the much higher north facing slopes of the
Santa Catalina Mountains.
Mount Lemmon (9157 ft) is the highest point and has a small ski area that is the southern most ski area in the US and gets an average of 180 inches of snow over winter.
Back in the day the military had RADARs on top of Mt. Lemmon used to watch for Russian nuke bombers approaching the US from the south.
Now that area is the
Mt. Lemmon Sky Center having many telescopes owned and operated by the
University of Arizona and the
University of Minnesota.
The main project, the
Catalina Sky Survey, is a project to discover comets and asteroids, and to search for near-Earth objects (NEOs) that may pose a threat of impact with Earth.
Tucson is in a basin surrounded by the
Tucson Mountains to the west, the
Rincon Mountains to the east, the
Santa Catalina Mountains to the north, and the
Santa Rita Mountains to the south.
The Tucson and Rincon mountains are the 2 sections of
Saguaro National Park, part of the
National Park System.
The park preserves the desert landscape, fauna and flora contained within the two park sections. The park was primarily established to protect its namesake—the giant Saguaro Cactus that in this park are near the northernmost limit of their natural survival zone.
Tucson is a service stop and the train will be there for about 45 minutes. Across the street is the historic
Hotel Congress and the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum is also on the train station grounds. Out the
right side of the train you can see "A" Mountain.
Eight miles or so after leaving Tucson and on the
left side of the train will be the Pima Air & Space Museum.
Some 22 miles out of Tucson you'll enter the Cienaga Creek riparian forest area,
if the dispatcher has put the train on the more easterly tracks that go along Cienaga Creek.
The 2 sets of tracks split some 6 miles before the train can get to Cienaga Creek.
At that point, weather permitting, you should be able to see the white enclosure of the Whipple Observatory on top of Mt. Hopkins in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson.
Either way, some 8 miles beyond the split the 2 sets of tracks cross each other with
the east set of tracks that go through the riparian area going under the west tracks.The 2 sets of tracks get together again near the small town of Mescal, AZ.
Out of the stop in Benson the train starts climbing to negotiate the pass in
Texas Canyon.
The
Little Dragoon Mountains (and I-10) will be on the
left with the
Dragoon Mountains on the
right near the pass.
Cochise and his men were driven into the
Dragoon Mountains in the late 1860s, They used the mountains to evaded capture and as a base to continue attacks against white settlements until a peace treaty with the Army was made in late 1872.
Once over the pass you'll drop down into the Basin surrounded by the Dragoon Mountains behind you, the
Chiricahua Mountains to the East and the
Pinaleno Mountains to the north.
The train will re-join I-10 at Willcox and be near I-10 all the way to Akela, NM where the train will veer off to the southeast, cross under I-10 and head more directly for El Paso.
The highest peak in the Pinaleno's is
Mt. Graham (10,725 feet) another location of major astronomical telescopes. The
Large Binocular Telescope's white enclosure should be visible out the left side of the train.
Some 24 miles past Akela the train goes by the Arden Lava Flow that will be out the
right side of the train.
Some 20 miles further the SL/TE goes through the new UP inter-modal yard near Santa Teresa, NM.
Twelve and a 1/2 miles further the train gets as close to the border with Mexico as it gets on the
right side of the train.
When the train crosses the Rio Grande River 2.5 or so miles later it's then in Texas, and if on time it's mid-afternoon.
