There are three national parks in Arizona - The Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest and Saguaro National Park. 1 Jodi is on a quest to visit national parks and so her and Jay spent some time in southern Arizona recently and I joined them for Kartchner Caverns, San Xavier, the Arizona- Sonora Desert Museum and a sunset drive through Saguaro National Park.
Saguaro National Park is a 92,000 acre park that are in two different areas on either side of Tucson, Arizona 2
The park was formed in 1994 and has 165 miles of trails. 2
We drove most of the time and did a very short hike at sunset.
The Saguaro is a beautiful and fascinating cactus.
They can grow to be 40 feet tall (12 meters) and live to be 150 years old. Their first side arm grows around 75-100 years old, and some never grow arms. 2
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I really like this one... it looks like they are about to fight.
My awesome traveling partners!
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While we didn't see any mammals on the hike there are cougars, coyotes, bobcats, white-tailed deer, mule deer, javelinas (native to the park), gray foxes, jackrabbits, ring-tailed cats, ground squirrels, packrats and the lesser long-nosed bat, which is endangered.
There are 107 bird species including the great horned owl, cactus wren, ravens, turkey vultures, roadrunners, woodpeckers, hawks, quail (my favorite) and hummingbirds.
Some of desert tortoise, diamondback rattle snakes (the Phoenix baseball team is named after them), Gila monsters, and lizards are some of the 36 reptiles species in the park. 2
My overall thoughts about the park are that it doesn't take too much time, maybe a hike or two, to see the park. There are lots and lots of saguaro and other desert plants and cactus. So if you go to see the national park have other things to do in the Tucson area as well.
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