Saguaro National Park and Desert Museum Oct 3, 2004

So much for relaxing. Today we drove down towards Tucson — two hours one way — to see the Saguaro National Park.

The park is famed for it's forest of cacti. The visitor centre was *nice* (photos at some later date) but the weather was swelteringly hot. I guess that comes with being in the desert. So, I've got lots of photos of cactus plants/trees now, but they all look similar.

Next, we went to the Desert Museum which was really more like a zoo except it only had animals/insects/etc which would be found in the desert in these parts. That second photo is a prairie dog, and is included because of a sign Jenn and I saw at Bryce Canyon. It read, "If you harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, poison, kill, trap, capture or collect Utah Prairie Dogs, you may face a fine up to $100,000 and up to a 1 year prison term."

Collect?? That's the part of the ridiculously verbose message that stood out for me. Do people actually collect prairie dogs? Maybe I'm out of the loop...

And finally, that last shot was supposed to be of an otter but the light was so low, I couldn't get a shot without him being just a quick blur — so I shot the tank alone.

Anyways, the shots aren't quite as dramatic as what we've been travelling through lately, and that's ok. I now feel like I need to sleep again. And thanks everyone for putting up with the irregular site updates! Only a few more days left in this vacation...

Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention about the prairie dogs - they look *exactly* like the gopher in Caddyshack. So they're great. :)