If you ever get to Tucson, Arizona, on business, for vacation or any other reason, make sure to visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, about 25 miles west of Tucson. If you've never been to the desert and if you like cacti and wildlife, this outdoor museum-zoo is heaven. I give the museum .
The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is cool. Well, it wasn't actually cool temperature-wise when I was there in early October 1997. It was 100 F. But it was dry, so you didn't mind the heat. I was thankful for sunglasses and my ever-present Acubra hat from Australia.
The museum-zoo is a 12-acre site with two miles of tightly-woven, wheel-chair accessible trails on which you are never far from shade or drinking water. Like any museum, this one is divided into subject or theme areas. Most museums have themed halls and rooms, but here an outdoor area has a theme.
If you're interested in an in-depth understanding of ecosystems, you can read the museum's explanations and look at the displays on mountain habitat, desert grassland, Arizona uplands and riparian habitat. What you see on the desert surface, though, isn't all there is to the desert. Two hidden parts of the ecosystem are life underground, which you can glimpse in an exhibit, and an easily missed unofficial exhibit — life in a giant saguaro cactus.
If you like cacti, this is a place to ooh and ahh over 140 species. You'll see giant saguaros like the one above; incredibly prickly cholla species; long, stringy ocotillo; an assortment of barrel, fishhook and other low and not-so-low roundish cacti; and an abundance of prickly pear cacti of various sizes like the one on the right. If you miss the spring flower season, you still might see some red prickly pear fruit, a favorite of wildlife. Even in early October, a few barrel cacti still had an orange or yellow flower or two. Even without flowers, the ocotillo is a treat in late afternoon when low sun gives the leaves a yellow glow.
Just when you thought you were in heaven because of the cacti and surrounding mountain scenery, you come upon one of the museum's wildlife exhibits. Visit at the right time of day and you are likely to see some interesting animals in rather natural looking settings. Cat Canyon houses an ocelot, margay, jaguarundi and (temporarily) a non-cat, a coatimundi (relative of the raccoon). Somewhere else at the museum you can see a puma like the one on the right here. Besides these animals, other large animals you'll see are black bear, bighorn sheep, wolf, kit fox, gray fox and javelina. The little prairie dogs were sleeping when I visited. (Click on the puma for a nine-part slide show designed for a 28.8 modem using Netscape 4. Slower modems will sufffer. Sorry. )
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