Saturday, November 23, 2019
The 23rd marks another month on the road for us. We have now been on the road, living in a motor home for 15 months! Currently we are in Arizona.
Today we visited Saguaro National Park. There are actually two parks: an east side and a west side and the city of Tucson is in between them. Our campground hosts suggested the west side.
We went to the visitor center first to get maps and trail directions and Jr. Ranger books. We also stayed for a park movie and a ranger led talk on Saguaro Cactus. Mr. Bob did a great job educating us on the Saguaro Cactus and also got us excited to go out hiking to see them in the desert.
This part of the country is located in the Sonoran Desert. This desert gets more rain than the Mojave Desert. About 8-9 inches more. It shows too in the vegetation.
These plants don’t even start branching until they are 5 feet tall and 50 years old! Many of these cactus are over 150 years old and weigh 6 tons!! They are designed to be able to expand when water is available so they can store it. They have “pleats” in their skin. When the pleats are deep in the skin the plant is not full of water. When the plant is flat and the pleats are smooth, the plant is full of water. What an awesome Creator we have that designed these plant so perfectly!
Here’s Jed with a baby one. Maybe a year or two old.
Many don’t survive because of exposure. Those that make it are often those in the shade of a nurse tree that protects them from frost and trampling. The Palo Verde is one of these kinds of nurse trees.
This one is probably 25-30 years old. You can see it under it’s “nurse tree”.
Here is Kyrah with one that hasn’t even starting to branch out yet…probably around 50 years old.
Here is Jeremiah with one that’s probably 150-200 years old.
Watch out for their spikes!
When they fall over or die, they decay and actually leave “ribs”.
Come walk with me…
We hiked about 6-7 miles on the ridge line with some beautiful views.
Here you can see some of the upcoming trail.
The clouds are pretty neat in this shot.
Enjoying our hike.
A little ninja-ing…
Suzie climbing on some rocks too.
Twins
These things are massive!!
This one looks like an octopus.
This is a Fishhook Barrel Cactus. It’s got fruit on it.
Flowers on the Ocotillo plant. It is November and there are flowers on a few of them.
Saw this cool rainbow that looked like a comet.
We stuck around for sunset (which occurs at 5:20). We’re in Mountain Standard Time which means were only 2 hours behind the East Coast now. (0:
Jeshuah made a short video while we were hiking today.
Absolutely stunning structures! I enjoyed this tour immensely! Never were able to see saguaros when we traveled west. Guess we needed to go more south.