November 25, 2020 - Arizona Desert Museum
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| Today we checked out the highly regarded Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, located southwest of Tucson, on the edge of the Saguaro National Park -West. This is the other place I remember going with Johnny Bray back in 1984. Other than remembering going, I remember nothing about it. Beau, Maggie and Parker (on her first outside excursion) joined us along with our son Joe who we were happy to have visited for a few days. |
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I would call the Desert Museum a combination of Zoo, Botanical Gardens and Natural History Museum. It is Trip Advisor's Number One thing to do in Tucson.
Here we are on a scenic hike through a desert botanical garden.
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| Founded in 1952, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum interprets the complete natural history of a single region—the Sonoran Desert and adjacent ecosystems—with plants and animals from the region featured together in its exhibits. |
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| A big Western Diamondback Rattler checks us out. |
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| Back in the day, Arizona had a surprising number of rivers. |
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Deserts interest me. On this trip, we're spending a lot of time in the Sonora Desert.
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| I also like the big cats. Here's a big one: a Mountain Lion. Also known as the Cougar, or Panther. The mountain lion is the second-largest cat in the New World after the jaguar and is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. |
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He has a fairly big area to live in; still, I'm sure he'd rather be running wild up in the Santa Catalina Mountains.
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| They found some big dinosaur bones in the area. In fact, they discovered a new type -- very large -- and named it the Sonorasaurus. This is a replica of a leg bone. |
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This is what Sonorasaurus looked like back in the day.
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| You hear the Coyote is doing well and are all over the place. Yet I've never seen one. Until today. There is a Coyote, sleeping in the shade under that tree. |
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| Ambling down one of the hiking paths. |
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| We came to the Javelina area. A Javelina is medium-sized desert pig. |
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| It's hard to see, but a Javelina is sleeping underneath that bush in the center of the picture. |
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Nice shot of Maggie, Beau and Parker.
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| A Beaver swims by. |
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| Not a good shot of a map showing where Sagauro Cactus grow. |
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A cutaway of a Sagauro cactus. Notice the strong interior skeleton.
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| In the center of the image is a tarantula spider, alongside a building. This was not an exhibit! |
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They had a shallow pool where manta rays would glide by. In non-Chinese flu days you could pet them. But it was still neat to see them up close.
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| Yay, Manta Rays! |
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| A humming bird takes a break from flapping its wings at a bazillion flaps a second. |
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| Diving for nector. |
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Monarch butterfly garden.
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Leaving the Desert Museum, we took Joe to see the Saguaro National Park - West. We drove the unpaved loop trail and did the short Valley View hike again. Everything was really lit up in the late afternoon sun.
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Just can't get enough Saguaro Cactus!
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| Growing like grass here. |
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Joe and Lynnette at the Valley View lookout.
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| Long shadows. |
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