Sunshine and Saguaros.

Our desert adventures continued this weekend at Saguaro National Park. This park is split in half: half on the east side of Tucson around the Rincon mountains, the other half in the Sonoran mountains west of Tucson.
On Friday, we visited the east side of the park and went on a couple short hikes. Fortunately, Lee had the foresight to bring an umbrella, not because it was rainy, but because it proved to be the best way to keep Paul out of the sun. Some fun cactus facts: Saguaros live a long time and grow very slowly. They might live as long as 250 years, they don't generally grow arms until they are 50, and if you see the arms flopping around weirdly it is because they were damaged by frost. I've got more cactus facts, but I'll save some of them as incentive for people to come visit.

This is a saguaro skeleton. I bet you didn't even know they had skeletons!

Pictured here: Road Runner. Sadly, does not say, "meep-meep."

One of the best Saguaros I have ever seen is right behind me.

A Crested Saguaro: a rare mutation makes this cactus look really funky.

Paul enjoyed the desert well enough when he was awake, but mostly he slept.

A great place to bird watch, too bad I don't know very many birds.

Saturday we visited the west side of the park. Not only are there even more Saguaros (no history of cattle grazing on this side!) but there are also some petroglyphs.

I love this hat.

Paul slept through this particular hike, got us both very sweaty.

This my personal favorite cactus.

Some ancient art.

Paul loved looking around at Picture Rock!

I hope you like cactus, because we serve our cactus on cactus with a side of cactus!

 

We got ourselves a National Parks pass so we can come back whenever we want and try a few different hikes. Not only that, but we'll see how many different National Parks we can hit this year.