The main reason we went to Tucson was to see the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is actually a zoo and museum up on a mountainside in Saguaro National Forest. This is the heartland of the saguaro cactus (pronounced sah-WAR-o), the iconic American southwest plant: it is wonderful to see them, and the Sonoran desert is in bloom and diverse and beautiful.
We couldn’t take Bella into the museum, and it’s against the law to leave her in the car, so Mary and I did the museum in turns. A wonderful mineral collection, snakes, an aviary, a hummingbird house, bears, mountain lions, javelina, coyotes, a huge collection of cactus. And birds everywhere, including the cactus wren
And the gila woodpecker, that nests in the saguaro.
And a curve-billed thrush (I think—just discovered I have misplaced my bird book), with bright yellow eye
Also got a good look at a black-headed grosbeak. These guys all just popped up in the picnic area. I could hardly get my sandwich eaten I was so busy with my binoculars. I also took pictures of the white-winged dove and Bullock’s oriole and others but that was in the aviary, which seems to me to be cheating.
We left the Museum in the late afternoon and the GPS says we have time, before heading north to Phoenix, to see Mission San Xavier del Bac, considered (according to the guide book) the finest example of mission church in the southwest, and strongly recommended by Mary’s cousin Helen, whom we are going to see in Phoenix. It was startling to see this large and blinding-white church standing up in the middle of an indian reservation of low adobe buildings. Wonderful decorations inside. It still serves the locals.
"The White Dove of the Desert"
You could also climb a steep hill to see a replica of the Lourdes grotto, but we decided to pass.
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