Friday, we went to the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum. It is a world-class zoo, botanical garden and natural history museum, all in one. Even at $18.50 each, it was well worth the visit. We usually don't spend more than an hour in a museum, but this one was primarily outdoors, so we got a 2 mile walk as a bonus. There are is a desert loop, with various residents on display. Below are just a few of them.
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| Javelina resting |
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| a cute little fox |
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| Owl |
From the amphibian display.
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| Toad |
One of the beautiful birds in the hummingbird aviary.
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| Hummingbird |
Mountain woodland with deer, mountain lion and and a mexican wolf.
There is an aviary with some quails and cardinals. A pollination garden explaining the roles of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Prairie dogs from the desert grassland section.
Canyon country bighorn.
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| Bighorn |
There is also an Ancient Arizona section with mineral displays, dinosaur bones, and a cave to walk through.
Saturday, Joan did her Christmas baking.
Sunday morning, Joan's computer wouldn't boot up. It had a break in the charging cable. We stopped at Best Buy where we got excellent service selecting the correct replacement charger.
Then we went to Kitt Peak National Observatory. There are 26 telescopes and other pieces of equipment for viewing the universe. There are some excellent displays describing many aspects of the stellar universe. We chose not to do the guided tour.
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| Some of the observatories |
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| Sundial | |
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| Click image see how the sundial adjusts for different months |
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Being at the top of a 7000 ft mountain, it also has great views from many points on the 8% grade 10 mile drive.
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| view from Kitt Peak |
Tuesday, we found a nice website (www.experience-az.com) which has sections for 4wd, biking, hiking, and quick trips. We discovered it while looking for information about the Helvetia site in the hills south of Tucson. There was a mine there, and some ruins are left, but the mining company has closed the access road to the public. When we looked at the hiking section of the website above, we found a hike in Honey Bee Canyon Park in Oro Valley, on the Northwest corner of Tucson, which we decided to do. Fortunately Joan had done a google-map directions check, and found out there was an accident on the freeway between the junction next us, and the next one west. So we were able to avoid the problem, with only a short slowdown due to the volume of traffic being rerouted around the it. The website for the hike had GPS locations for 7 points on the hike, which John put into our etrex-20. They turned out to be somewhat confusing to use, because the trails did not go straight to the next point, but looped around a bit, so at a couple of points, it wasn't clear which trail to follow at a junction. However, we had taken a picture on our phone of the trail directions, which clarified which way to go. The trail starts at a little park with a couple of ramadas and restrooms. It starts by going south to a rock dam that you can walk through to get into a neat little canyon.
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| Rock dam |
It opens up to views of the St. Catalina Mountains. Then you walk back up the wash, under the highway to a smaller rock dam north of the road. There is a boulder just past the dam with petroglyphs done by the Hohokam people (450 to 1200 AD). Apparently there is a site nearby with mounds, pit structures, plazas, ball court and other rooms. The site is being kept a secret while the town of Oro Valley is attempting to create a Honey Bee Village preserve.
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| Canyon |
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| Woodpecker or Cactuspecker? |
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| Petroglyphs |
The rest of the week our mornings were sort of warm but felt chilly due to the moisture in the air from periodic rain and steady wind.
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