Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park
These two spots were close to our camp spot and in addition to the Titan museum (will see in a couple of days) were the two things I had planned on seeing in Tucson.
Advice on the Desert Museum – Go There! Make plans sometime in your life to visit this place. It is amazing. Go early in the morning (cool, fewer people) and take the early docent led tour. Lots of information well presented. These people know their stuff. The lady that led our tour was asked about being a docent. She said she had three masters degrees and the hardest thing she ever did was prepare to docent at the desert museum.
Barn owl was a warm-up prior to tour.
Everything looks natural. If you thought Disney did a good job of making things look authentic, come here. There are many different animal species all in natural settings.
You hardly notice they are caged.
Wolves. See a cage?
Prairie dog and Roadrunner
Bobcat
Havalina
Burrowing animals have glass walls on their homes (think ant farm). To see a scorpion you have to lift a rock. Two amazing aviaries – one for hummingbirds and the other filled with a wide variety of birds. Got within three feet of a nesting hummingbird and even closer to a nesting quail.
There are docents everywhere. At many spots there are docents giving talks and demonstrations on a variety of things.
Couple more.
The museum is a couple of miles south of the national park. We were coming from the south so we figured we would hit the museum first then go on to Saguaro. Good thing! We ended up spending nearly six hours at the museum.
Impossible to describe the experience. Go there!
Saguaro National Park is one of the few places where the Saguaro cactus can be found. There are two units – one on each side of Tucson. Different feel from museum but still impressive to see acres and acres of this unique plant.
This one was pretty tall. Yes, that is Sue at the base.
Petroqlyphs here too.
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