We're back on the road. Heading south from Sedona, we skirted Pheonix to the east to visit Casa Grande National Monument. It was a series of Hohokam ruins which included a three story complex that represented the height of their building prowess. The construction material was a kind of natural cement, a mixture of pebbles, clay and sand that gave the site a much different appearance than many of the other ancient Indian sites that we've visited on this trip.
It's so hot in Arizona that even the buildings need to be in the shade:
At Casa Grande we took a couple Hershey's bars out of the air conditioned car for a snack - they were rock solid when we grabbed them but they melted into a messy puddle of mush within thirty seconds. Gross.
Our next stop was just west of Tucson at Saguaro National Park (West). We were impressed with the giant cacti as soon as we drove into Pheonix but were even more impressed by the sheer numbers of them within the park. We went to the visitor center and learned fun facts about the saguaros:
-A saguaro generally lives for 150-200 years!
-A saguaro can soak up to 200 gallons from a single rainfall!
-A full grown saguaro weighs about 16,000 pounds!
-A saguaro doesn't grow "arms" until it is at least 75 years old!
I especially enjoyed taking pictures of the dead saguaros, since their ribs would fan out towards the sky:
Lisa wanted to BE a saguaro:
Unfortunately it was too hot for us to hike on any of the trails in the park. We headed to Tucson to visit my cousins Gret, Kim and Melissa as well as my aunt Helen. We were treated to some great company as well as a delicious chicken dinner! Melissa even sent us off with an extensive care package when we left (the chocolate covered peanuts didn't last long...).
There was a long drive ahead of us to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in northern Texas. Much of the mountain range is a fossilized coral reef - the result of an uplifted ancient shallow sea bed. It was too hot to hike again so we ended up chatting for a while with a ranger that just finished at Marlboro College in Brattleboro.
The slight green in the mountains was a welcome change after the desolation that we spent the morning driving through:
We reached our goal for the day when we arrived at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the evening. We made it in time for the evening bat flight! No electronics were allowed at the amphitheater so we don't have any pictures. It was amazing watching 300,000 bats fly out of the cave and off into the horizon; they looked like a black cyclone as they swirled out of the cavern.
Time for bed since we'll be going into the cave just after the bats get back in...
No comments:
Post a Comment