The Saguaro National Park

   Today we visited the Saguaro National Park. Saguaros are the 30 foot tall cactus that look like a tall green pole with arms. This park is dedicated to preserving what Arizona looked like before people started developing it. They talk about the Saguaro National Park as being a gigantic cactus garden. We identified the large Saguaro cactus and the short Prickly Pear Cactus and the Fishhook Cactus, whose barbs are hooked like fishhooks. There are several other kinds of cactus here, just waiting for a budding young botanist to explore.

   We followed the paved road through the park. Going slow and letting other cars pass by. We saw a pair of squawking Curve Billed Thrashers (Toxostoma curvirostre) singing “quit-quit” on top of one of the saguaro cacti.

   The national wildlife people are re-introducing the Desert Bighorn Sheep in the mountainous areas near here. Signs already warn of the presence of Mountain Lions around here. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets. Lets get ready to rumble.

   There are huge aircraft graveyards in Arizona. We saw one with disassembled planes from several eras. Lots of prop planes. Some bombers. Some helicopters. All missing a tail, or having a hole in its fusilage. This is like some elephant graveyard for tired old planes.

   Lunch at the cutest little french bistro. A warmed spinach salad and caper butter chicken with artichokes for Robert; a tuna sandwich with cheddar cheese for Berry. We saw two females making a sweater at the table next to ours. Berry explained the difference between knitting and crochet.

   Tucson is suffering from record temperatures. Robert is taking a medicine which induces him to lose moisture and become dehydrated. These record temps are somewhat dangerous. At 12:30pm the dashboard of our rental car registered 104 °F. The Fahrenheit scale was invented in 1724 by the German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. The Fahrenheit scale is now only used in the United States, Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, and Palau. All other countries in the world now use the Celsius scale. 104°F = 40°C. It is hot.

   The Saint Louis Cardinals clenched their division with a victory over Pittsburg. We watched the game during dinner on MLB Gameday on Robert’s IPhone.

Robert and Berry

photos courtesy of wikipedia