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London
Arrived on
23rd Feb 2013 |
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50°f
thick clouds.
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Blog updated: 4th Apr 2013
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Our latest 5 Diary Entries
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20th May 2012
The Desert
The sun rose just after 5am on Saturday and proceeded to begin its day of scorching. One of the main attractions near Tucson is The Desert Museum. Well, it would be un-American not to charge people to see things that they can look at for nothing and it definitely wouldn’t be British to ignore a Main Attraction. We thus decided that a trip to The Desert Museum, itself situated in the middle of Saguaro National Park, was a must-see.The Giant Saguaro is the cactus that you see on all the cowboy films – the big prickly bugger that often looks like a tall bloke with his arms up. It’s the Arizona State Symbol and as such is depicted on every vehicle licence plate. Bus shelters in Tucson have their roofs held up by stylised Giant Saguaros. We were staying in a house on Giant Saguaro Place. It was surrounded by these things. And we’ve just made up our minds that we need to pay to see more of them. Can that be described as ironic or just daft?So, after driving for an hour, (including, much to Chris’s delight, some 10 minutes on a dirt road), we arrived at The Desert Museum. The sceptics were in fine spirits at this point, but we kept (reasonably) quiet, paid up and went in thinking we’d only have to grin and bear it for an hour or so before heading back to look at our very own Saguaros from the comfort of the pool. As it was now several hours since breakfast, lunch was high on the list of priorities so we made our way towards the Boiling Fat Café. As the hummingbird aviary was en route to our cholesterol feast, we thought, “might as well pop in and get it over with”. How wrong we were! We must have spent nearly an hour wandering round this giant birdcage gawping at, and trying to photograph, these amazing tiny birds. They have all been hatched and raised in this facility and are completely un-fazed by us mere humans. When we finally left, even Mr Cynic remarked that the hummingbird aviary alone was worth the entry fee!The rest of the museum was good, but nothing could top the hummingbird experience. Most of it was cactus, shrubs and trees, but there were a few cages containing mountain lions, snakes and bobcats (we’d already seen one of these things walking down the front drive at home…). Like most zoos, the cages varied in size from ‘not too bad’ down to the tiny little enclosure in which a falcon was cruelly imprisoned. Having anticipated an early dip that day, we were pleasantly surprised to find that there was more than enough in the ‘museum’ to hold our attention until very late afternoon. Good value and, in Michelin Guide parlance, worth a (short) journey.
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Diary Photos
| 20th May 2012 Enjoying another Margarita - Downtown Tucson! |
| 20th May 2012 Saguaro National Forest - Cactus in Flower |
| 20th May 2012 Pretty Bird! |
| 20th May 2012 What a Pair! |
| 20th May 2012 Desert Museum - Cactus backdrop! |
| 20th May 2012 The Four of Us - Saguaro National Forest |
| 20th May 2012 Another Pretty Bird! |
| 20th May 2012 Pretty Blue Bird! |
| 20th May 2012 Yes, another pretty bird! |
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