March 7, 2020 Tucson, AZ - Saguaro National Park



We arrived in Tucson late the night previous.  I had originally planned on dropping Gina off and doing a little visiting and then moving on.  But Gina told me Victoria had plans for a girls night out and how they were looking forward to my visit.  After the fact, I'm not sure that was true.  Her family is really nice and I'm sure they were happy to put me up for the visit, but I'm not sure they were as excited to have a near stranger in their house for half a week.  Even then, I figured I'd use the time to catch up on computer work, laundry and just take a break.  But they wanted to be good hosts and we had fun activities every day.  It was really nice.  I tried to make it clear they didn't need to do that, I'd be spending additional time in Arizona to knock off my lists, but we all went out every day and did a little something.  It was nice and I hope they didn't feel pressure to entertain me, as I was just really happy to have a nice bed to sleep in and a hot shower.

The first day there, we loaded up the kids and we went to the Saguaro National Park.  The park isn't that large and has a nice driving loop.  We had packed a lunch, but all the picnic spots were full so we did the loop and went home. Made a couple of stops to get photos and did one short hike.  There isn't much to do there, I didn't see a museum or educational center (although there could have been one in the visitors center).  The Saguaro cactuses are really unique and only found in the Sonoran Desert.  Some look like the do in cartoons.  But many have lots of arms or funny tops.  They can grow to exceed 50 feet tall.  It can take 10 years for a Saguaro cactus to grow 1 inch.  Once they get started though, it speeds up.  A 70 year old cactus is usually about 6.5 feet.  By 100 years old, they can be 15-16 and can start producing arms.

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