Saguaro National Park

There are two parts to this national park and they are on opposite sides of Tucson. The larger segment is just east of Tucson and is about 85 square miles. The smaller segment is northwest of Tucson and is about 55 square miles. We just got to see the eastern part of the park.

Love those saguaros !!

Gila Monster - about 18" long.  It was crossing the street just as we began our driving tour.  About 15 seconds after I tookthis, it disappeared into the brush.
Antelope ground squirrel.  It was just a little bit bigger than a chipmonk.

Lunch at Saguaro.

The desert marigolds were in full bloom.

White easter-bonnet.

Fish hook cactus.  It was about 2' tall.  Fall on this and you may never get up !

Saguaros this tall are about 50 to 60 years old. They can live up to 200 years, grow as tall as 50' and weigh 8 tons or more.

This landscape is just... different.

Close up of a prickly pear cactus flower.

Dead saguaro.

They come in all shapes !

This is the tallest one we saw. Close to 35' ??

Looking out from an overlook.

One with arms and a crested top.  I like what the park service folks call it: brain mutant. It is estimated that only 1 in 200,000 develope this crest.

Close up of the crest.

Open pit copper mine and The Titan Missile Museum

There are quite a few open pit copper mines in Arizona. This one is just a few miles north of where we are staying in Green Valley.
The Titan Missile Museum is even closer. There were 18 Titan missiles around Tucson.  All the sites except this one have been destroyed.  This one was saved for the sole purpose of becoming a museum.  A couple of items needed to be done, though, to satisfy the Russians that it was inactive: there is no warhead (when you look at the photo of the missile below, you will see a small piece cut out of the nose cone. The Russian satellites can see that the nose cone is empty) and in another photo, there are huge concrete blocks that keep the silo door from opening.

Panorama of the mine.

Close up of the area they are currently mining.

The machine in the center is drilling holes for dynamite.  If we had gone to the 4PM tour, we probably would have seen them blasting.  

Wild horses on the mine property.

An obsolete truck.  The ones they use now are twice as big.

These tires are $37,000 a piece - and each truck has 6.  They last about 6 months.

Yum, Yum !! That's copper being separated from the ore.

Giant rock crushers.

They say they recycle a lot of the water they use.  I guess these are the tanks used to clean the water.

The waste has to be stored somewhere.  This 'pond' is at least 6 square miles and is made up of several layers.  You can see them building another layer.

The Titan Missile Museum. All you see from the ground are the doors that open when the missile is launched. 

The 2 rectangular concrete blocks keep the silo doors from opening. 

The Titan missile.

The long corridor between the missile and the control room.

Marge, our tour guide in the control room.  There were 2 officers that manned the control room and Marge was one of them.  She served  when the missiles were armed and ready to go. 

A close up of the missile.

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum

This is an indoor/outdoor museum (but mostly outdoor).  It is about 10 miles west of downtown Tucson.  It is a zoo, natural history museum and a botanical garden.  It is 21 acres with 2 miles of trails, so you don't have to go far to see a lot.  Much of the flora you have already seen in previous posts, plus there will be a few new ones in future blogs, so I have not included much in this post.  In addition to the animals in the photos below, they had what many zoos have: spiders, snakes, lizards, beavers and otters (I tried to get photos of them but they wouldn't hold still !!) and birds.  We did see a coyote, but he wouldn't get up from his nap so I could get a photo.

A view of the country side on the way.

Some of the trails within the museum.

Andrea loved the bright colors !

We didn't see any, but these mock ears are thatof a Townsend bat.  They have large ears in proportion to their body (ears are about 1 1/2"  long). To get an idea of how large, they had these  'ears' made based on the proportion for humans.  I had to include a photo of the 3 of us.



Lunch at the Ocotilla Cafe.

One of the few times the sun came out.

Wolf.

Mountain Lion.

Grey Fox.

Ocelot.

This bobcat was about 28" long and weighed about 24 lbs.  Pound for pound, the bobcat is the strongest of all cats; it  can bring down prey 7 timesits weight. One of the keepers just happened to be feeding them (there were 2 bobcats in the enclosure) and gave us that fact.

Javalina.  These look like a type of pig, but are not.  They are really a peccary (I'm sure that helps !).  Let's just suffice to say they are not pigs. 

Where's the Western Screech Owl ?  No cheating and looking at the next photo !!

Isn't that great camouflage ?

Big Horn Sheep.

Gamble's Quail.

Everybody's favorite. I couldn't believe it sat long enough for a good photo.

A baby hummingbird.

Caught one in flight.  Know how many photos I had of the ground and blurry trees before I got this ?!!