Tuesday - just another day in the sun!

Tuesday morning dawned with, what else, bright sunshine. I got up early, (Lloyd was still asleep) and walked down to the clubhouse to post my blog. My intention was to do it at night but that’s not working so well. By the time we walk around in the sun all day, we just don’t feel like going out at night. It’s a bit of a hike to the clubhouse on foot, and there’s really no where to park if you drive, so I don’t go.

After I was done I walked back and we had breakfast and tried to determine what to do. By about 10:30 we decided to check out the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The drive there is actually through the mountains and the roads are narrow and winding. Lloyd would love to do this road on a motorcycle.

When we got to the Museum we parked and paid our admission. I’d bought a “Travel Passport” at the visitors centre in town on Monday and it turned out to be a good deal. It cost $15.00 and gives you buy one, get one free admission to many attractions. The admission to the museum was $13.00 so it’s already almost paid for itself. The first stop on the tour is the reptile house (figures!) where you have the pleasure of viewing all the poisonous snakes in the area. Once we got out of there, we headed outside to the park area. There are a series of pathways, some paved, some gravel, and if you follow them around they go past enclosures with various native animals. The trouble was the temperature was about 94 degrees so all the animals were tucked away out of the sun so few were visible. We did see a coyote, a fox, a raccoon, (all things we have at home!) but we also saw a couple of sleeping Javalina’s (pronounced Hav-a-Leen-a) They look a little like a large black pig but apparently they are not related. We caught a glimpse of a lynx sleeping on the rocks, but that’s about it.

There was also a cactus garden with signs to identify the various cactus’. The Saguaro is of course the largest and it was interesting to learn that they don’t grow arms until they are 65 to 75 years old. In the country side, there are no trees on the hills, and in the mountains, there are no trees, but the hillsides are covered in these large cactus’. The other most common one seems to be the prickly pear cactus. There are many varieties of this one and they are everywhere. Right now they are all in bloom with beautiful yellow or pink flowers that resemble roses. It turns out this is probably the best time to come here. May is the driest month and the cacti are all in bloom. One display had samples of the fruit that the prickly pear grows and I’ve seem these in our stores at home but have no idea what you do with them, but you KNOW I’m going to find out before I get back!

Apparently this area is rich in wildlife. They have poisonous coral snakes, several types of rattle snakes, tarantula’s, black widow spiders, and the list goes on and on. Our tour through the natural part of the park was almost finished when a large black snake slithered across in front of us. As you might have guessed, that was it for me. We were only a few feet past a loop that took you back to the entrance, and I was first in line to get out of there. We missed the humming bird garden but that’s okay, I have those at home too.

We stopped into the gift shop where I picked up some shirt for the kids and then we left. By now it was very hot and we were both very thirsty. SO back to town and drove around till we found a restaurant with an outdoor patio and cold beer. It was actually an Italian restaurant so we had pizza and beer on the patio, where I met my first prairie dog. The only prairie dogs I’ve ever seen were in the cartoons, and I thought they were the same size as groundhogs, which we have lots of in Ontario. But they aren’t. They are very cute and only about the size of a chipmunk. There was one who was quite brave and would come right over beside my chair to pick up little pieces of pizza crust. Eventually I held on in my fingers and he came right over and nudged it but wasn’t quite brave enough to take it from me, but I’m sure if I’d persevered he would have eventually. There was a second one in the tree beside where we were sitting but he wasn’t nearly as brave.

After stuffing our faces, we headed back to the resort. It was, after all, afternoon nap time. So Lloyd napped and I put on my bathing suit and had my nap beside the pool. By this time it was around 4:00 pm so I knew I wouldn’t burn too badly, and I was right. But it was still very hot so by the time I got back I was done in. Neither of us was the least bit hungry after eating pizza earlier so we just vegged in front of the TV for the rest of the evening.

Now it’s Wednesday morning and we are once again faced with that monumental task – deciding WHAT SHALL WE DO TODAY?