Saguaro National Park, Tucson, AZ

Sunday, December 21

Friends from Texas surprised us and came out to visit.  They arrived late Saturday, December 20 and will stay until Friday, December 26.  We have not done any site-seeing yet so excited to be able to share it with friends.  We decided to go several places over the next few days.  We took so many pictures at each of the places we visited that I will be making individual posts for each visit.

Today, Sunday, December 21, our first stop was Saguaro National Park.

This is on the way to the Saguaro National Park Visitors Center.  It was amazing to me to see all these saguaro cactus, then a valley with lots of water and mountains beyond that.  

It was different seeing lots of tall cactus instead of trees.

We learned that saguaro cactus don't even start getting buds until they are about 50 years old AND they only live on average about 200 years.  The local Indians believe each saguaro cactus is a dead relative.

Gila monster lizards are supposed to be plentiful here.  This one is stuffed.  We did not see any in the wild.

This is a typical view along the road we drove through the park. 

Tic thought this dead cactus looked like a horse head.  Do you see it?

There are at least 5 kinds of cactus in this picture.  Can you find them all?

Look at the huge rock balanced on the lower right side of the picture.

Here is a close-up.  It makes you wonder how that big boulder got settled there.

When we stopped & took a hiking trail, we came to these petroglyphs. 

It was interesting how many petroglyphs there were in such a small area.

Look how tall these saguaro cactus are and they are still fairly young.  We stood next to one to give a perspective.  Only one had a bud starting to grow.  After this stop we left the park for our next destination of Old Tucson Studio.