Our first stop of today is at Casa Grande National Monument. On the picture you see the large central adobe known as Casa Grande, but there are many smaller adobes surrounding the large one, although they did not withstand time nearly as well. As you can see in the picture a canopy now protects the monument from the elements.
Casa Grande is one of the best preserved examples of Hohokam architecture today. Archeologists frequently excavate parts of the area to learn more about Hohokam culture. It is thought that Casa Grande may have been built as a primitive "calendar". This model shows what the inside once looked like
I did not take any pictures of the inside because many people had scratched their names in the walls. It wasn't until later that I realized that was done by people who lived more than a hundred years ago ... wow, and I thought that was just a recent development!
This beautiful owl was taking a nap up in the rafters.
Next up is Rooster Cogburn's ostrich ranch. It's one of those things that you add to your program and you're kind of scratching your head going "is this really a good idea for a stop?"
YES! It's a great idea! We had so much fun playing with the animals. There are a ton of ostriches spread out over the property. Here's me feeding the ostriches
Can we have some more please?
They have really hard beaks and they do bite, so Sandy preferred to feed the gentler animals like the donkeys
There was also a goat feeding station. They were too cute for words!
And deer
Mad cow, or mad deer? They look pretty goofy up close haha
After feeding all the animals outside we went in the Lorikeet enclosure. They waste no time getting in line to feed. Here one just landed on my head.
Their tongues are blue and stubby!
On the way out we spotted this little fellow in the parking lot. It's a road runner. Beep, beep!
Where before it had kind of drizzled, the wind really picked up now and we had to drive through some pretty intense dust storms. Here's one right off the road
The plan was to visit Saguaro NP East later today, but as we're driving to our next stop we suddenly find ourselves in Saguaro NP West. I'd planned the park as our last visit today so we could watch the sunset between the cacti, but the sun is nowhere to be found. The western side of the park is supposed to be nicer anyway, so we change our plans and stop by the Red Hills visitor center
I don't think I wrote about this before, but many of the national and state parks have visitors’ centers with exhibits and short movies/slides shows about their park. They are excellent stops to learn more about the park and ask about suggested trails, etc. Highly recommended!
We watch a very moving slide show about the connection between the desert and the Native Americans that lived in the area, then pick up a wide brimmed hat in the gift shop. I've been looking at it in a couple of the park gift shops now and so I figured I might as well buy it. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow so I can pose for a picture of my new southwestern look!
Look at all those cacti! I wish I'd taken more pictures, but the camera was getting soaked.
The Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum is more of zoo/botanical garden, than a museum. Mostly outdoors, it displays plants and animals found in the Sonoran desert. They try to make it look as natural as possible, for the visitors, but above all for the animals. I decided to share more pictures today so you can see some of the other animals that live in the desert.
First a cactus in bloom
Mountain lion. Much bigger and fiercer than we had expected. Now this is one I won’t be sad to miss while hiking
One of the bobcats is sound asleep. It’s obviously dreaming about chasing something ...
My favorite exhibit; the javelinas! They can’t see very well, but they have an astute sense of smell.
As you can tell they are very social animals that like hanging out in groups.
Another cactus about to bloom
I like this view of the valley below. You can see towards the right that a lot of the land is used for farming. Although water is an issue, land is cheap and we’ve come across many farms during our trip.
The prairie dogs have ventured out of their holes after the rain lets up
The whole mountain has become engulfed in fog/cloud. Not a good sign of what’s to come.
A coati. I’ve never seen, or even heard anything about this animal before. While it looks like a type of anteater, it’s actually more closely related to raccoons.
Couple of bighorn sheep. We’ve seen many signs posted along the mountain roads to watch out for them, but this is the first time we’ve actually laid eyes on them.
We end our visit to the museum with a walk inside the hummingbird enclosure. It's been dry for most of our time at the museum, but now the rain starts back up. The temperature has also plummeted from a toasty 75 degrees yesterday, to less than 40 degrees today. Time to talk a quick look around and move on to our hotel for tonight. They hummingbirds fly around freely; at times flying so closely over your head that they sound like little fighter jets.
Here’s one guarding her nest.
Beautiful purple coloring. Oddly enough if you looked from a different angle it all just looked black.
We're starting to see more curves in the road on our way out and to make matter worse it now starts sleeting! Yep, sleet in the desert in Arizona ... so typical for us to have weird stuff happen on our vacation. If we'd been high up in the mountains I could understand it snowing, but we weren't that high up at all.
After a while the sleet turns into rain again and the road straightens out. It's still raining when we get to our final stop of the day; San Xavier del Bac. This old mission is supposedly one of the best preserved missions of the west.
Very intricate design inside.
On the way out I take a few quick pictures of the flooding we encounter. The roads in this area of the country are not built to handle any significant rain and it shows! On the right hand side of the picture you can see the water splashing up.
I liked this rock formation near the rest stop
Look at the size of those boulders! The little red car is our new rental.
The rest of the drive is all major highways and we reach Willcox shortly after dark. The front desk suggests a restaurant that's housed inside a converted train. It's a bit run down and looks a little shady to me, but this food is OK and there's little choice. Willcox is pretty run down, not a lot of nice restaurants or hotels here (although our hotel is pretty nice).
Chain saw blade artwork (who knew there was such a thing?!) on the restaurant wall
Mileage for today: 248
PS. Very little planned for tomorrow. We'll have to see what the weather's like too. If worst come to worst, we'll just drive straight down to the next hotel so there might not be an update until we're back home on 2/13/10.
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1 comments:
I suppose that Hohokam architecture is Indian. Remarkebly, that they had a calender like that.
The goat station looks like a rich man's hunting trophy's room. The road runner is very cute, did you see it run? The picture of the sleeping Sam is my favourite. Beautiful purple bird!!!!
Love and kisses for both of you,
Joeve and Rob
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