My husband has taken off work, so I took 2 days vacation to spend with him. Instead of staying at home and working on that honey-do list, we decided to visit Saguaro National Park.
I have lived in Arizona practically my whole life and I’d never been. So we set off, on a day that promised to set records for highs (we’re almost at the century mark here so we thought we’d head south for the cooler weather). It was barely 95F there.
I was hoping for some wildflowers, but they were in the east side of the park and we took a detour. Saguaro National Park is the only national park divided by a city (Tucson), and because of this there were more flowers in the east side than the west.
Aside from getting lost thanks to google maps, it was amazing to see so many cacti in one place. We also saw a few ground squirrels and roadrunners. No snakes on the paths, but our daughter freaked out from the butterflies:D
I would love to return again, but it’ll be February without a chance of rain. Given the number of washes to get around the park, I wouldn’t want to end up stranded.
Linda Andrews 
It’s like an alien landscape from another planet compared to what I see everyday her in NC. I am a big fan of Louis L’Amour’s books. I’ve read all 105 of them and of course most of them were westerns. When I was transferred from Norfolk, VA to Oakland, CA I got to drive through this area and it was exciting to see places he described in his books so accurately. When he passed away in 1988 I almost cried because there would be no more books from him. I tried reading other western writers but no one was close to his skill with story telling.
It’s funny but when I travel to green places it takes a while to get used to the alien ness of the landscape.