Who Painted my Desert Green?

11 Mar 2025

Welcome to Saguaro National Park, Arizona!

The Saguaro Cactus is the monarch of the Sonoran Desert, the 3rd of the major desert areas we've visited on our trip. And in the Saguaro National Park, there's a whole forest of them!

The first thing we did was go to the visitor center and follow a ranger learning about all the plant-life and the lifecycle of the Saguaro Cactus. The big green bush at the base of the big Saguaros here is called Palo Verde, and shades baby saguaro plants during the highest heat before they get big enough to store water across the dry months.

There's even a baby saguaro that we got to see on the tour! It's the little cactus in the middle of the frame by the prickly pear cactus.

Thinking we'd catch a quick museum before we found dinner, we went to the Desert Museum. As it turns out, it's 50 acres and is basically a full zoo. So 2 zoos in one week! Sara was ecstatic.

The bird aviary even had some educational opportunities! The parents behind us were less enthused about the education their children were getting.

The zoo is doing a dinosaur exhibit right now, and they spread dino exhibits across the park!

We also finally got to see a Bighorn Sheep! We've been in their habitat for well over 2 weeks of the trip, but we only ever saw these couple in captivity.

They had some really cool botanical garden areas too, especially the Boojum Tree!

The park also had some wild visitors, and not just birds! There was a big iguana just hanging out on the rock wall outside.

Some of the cutest animals were the tiny Ground Owls, Bobcat, and Grey Fox.

There was also an underground cave exhibit that had an amazing collection of local rocks and a real caving experience where Cory had to squeeze through really tight spaces to move forward!

Finally, we need to talk about the snakes. Everywhere we went at Saguaro was warning us about the snakes.

In Arizona, they seem really worried about these cuddly customers. We found them very endearing, so aren't sure why they make such a big deal out of them.

The toads were fun too!

We left the Desert Museum ready for a beautiful sunset, and the park did not disappoint!

Even our campsite was gorgeous with the setting sun.

In the morning we took a scenic drive and walk to get a view of the valley and we got to see lots of plants up close. No wildlife unfortunately.

The scenic tour also had a collection of petroglyphs, ancient writing chiseled into stones, presumably used for sign posting to other travelers.

Saguaro National Park is probably the prettiest desert we've been to so far. There's at least one more to go though, White Sands National Park in New Mexico!