Trust us to go to the desert and have it pour rain all day!
Today's park adventure took us to the outskirts of Tucson in the early early morning. We saw the sun come up behind us as we drove through the mountains, and it was spectacular. Luckily, there was a little pull-off area so we could stop and take some pictures.
As the sky lightened, we got closer and closer to the western section of Saguaro National Park. (We would love to have gone to the eastern section too, but there was just no time this trip. Yeah, that's right, I said this trip — the park is definitely on my repeat visit wish list, and I also wouldn't mind seeing Tucson during the daytime.)
It was too early for any of the park offices to be open, so we started with an early morning stroll on the Desert Discovery Nature Trail. We saw plenty of rabbits, and a few birds, and we heard coyotes howling in the distance, but that was the extent of the wildlife. Mostly we were there for the cactuses — and boy were there a lot of cactuses! Hedgehog, barrel, cholla, prickly pear, and, of course, saguaro, standing sentry in the cool morning.
After that, we headed to the visitor center, which was still not open, but we ran into a friendly maintenance man who pointed us in the direction of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which was about to open, so we decided to make that our next stop. It was raining lightly, but we weren't too worried because we figured it would blow over pretty quickly. Except the joke was on us, because even after an hour of exploring all the indoor exhibits at the museum and having a lengthy discussion with one of the docents about cactus skeletons (side note: Cactus skeletons are wood! This was a revelation to me; I always assumed cactuses just had some thick green jelly stuff inside them.), it was still raining, even harder than before. It was pouring, even. Which was really neat because we learned that each saguaro can hold onto 200 gallons of water if there's a good downpour ... but not so neat because we were all soaking wet and cold and hungry.
Luckily for us, one of the museum docents helpfully directed us to a cafe that wasn't too far away, and we went in and feasted. Max had breakfast tacos, and I got mesquite pancakes with agave honey (made from cactuses). (Mike just had his usual eggs and toast, in case you were wondering.) By the time we finished breakfast and headed back into the park, the visitor center was open, so we did some exploring inside, and once the rain let up to just a steady drizzle, we took the Cactus Garden Trail from the visitor center and did some more exploring. Mike saw a gila woodpecker on top of a saguaro, which is something I very much wanted to see, but it was gone before I got there with the camera. Darn quick birds!
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