It has been a few days since I have posted, as we have been traveling to our next destination. We stopped a night in Phoenix, AZ before continuing to Tucson. We are in the Sonoran Desert and this is their monsoon season, sure enough all 3 days we have been here they have had rain. Kind of odd how we have made this whole trip and not run into any rain, even in Washington and Oregon, but then we get to the Arizona desert and it rains. Rain is a funny thing in the desert, I would have thought it would have soaked in as fast as it would fall, but it doesn't, it just kind of sits on top of the ground, and then they have all kinds of flooding issues. We had to turn around yesterday trying to get somewhere because the road was under water. A resident here said the water only sinks in a few inches and the rest runs off, or stands.

It is also amazing to me how the topography of the land changes in an instant. We were driving from the desert plateau of Williams, AZ (where the temps stay around the high 80s) to about 4,500ft lower elevation and the Sonoran Desert, we round a curve in the interstate and all the sudden on the mountain side is a forest of saguaro cactus. I am also amazed at the mountains around the Phoenix and Tucson area. I think I was expecting the southern desert to be more flat lands but traveling the whole length of Arizona from north to south we have never left sight of mountains. Some have pine trees (northern) some have cactus but always a good size mountain.

The Saguaro National Park was not much different then the country side around Tucson, it was not like some of the national parks that offer a surprise view when you approach an overlook. I guess it is a national park in order to preserve an area of cactus desert from ever becoming urbanized and therefore lost.

The saguaro are quite large when grown, I would say many were well over 15 ft high and it seemed the average number of arms was around 5. As we drove through the park, I counted about 5 species of cactus that shared the land. It was not what I would call a pretty part of the US, but it is interesting. I am still waiting to see my first wild road runner. Maybe today as we travel on down the road. New Mexico, here we come.