Our destination for today was a small private botanical park right in the midst of the city named Tohono Chul. We went there last January when we passed through Tucson and felt compelled to return. This is one of our favorite places even though it is situated in an urban area. The park is just gorgeous with a variety of desert environments accessible by paved and gravel pathways.
We started in their hummingbird garden after we discovered that passage through both the facility gift shop and restaurant was required to get there. We cozied up on a bench and watched the birds and particularly the butterflies as they flew between the flowering plants looking for the good stuff. There are also a couple varieties of small lizards living in the garden. They were cute.
We continued through the Children’s Ramada, a colonial courtyard with some outdoor sculptures, the Children’s Garden, an ethnobotanical garden, a sinagua garden (sinagua in Spanish means “without water”), a butterfly garden which was just spectacular, a tortoise enclosure, a riparian section with nice benches along the stream, some performance gardens and a cactus and succulent garden before calling it a day and heading for the exit.
On the way back to the gate, I decided to have a seat on a nice bench shaded by an enormous mesquite tree amidst the gorgeous desert flora and fauna. Pretty soon after sitting down I noted some rather nasty insects that were not pleased with my seat selection and they attacked. The foul yellow jackets only stung me a couple times before I finished a quite athletic dance complete with spastic flailing, shirt wiggling and head slapping motions culminating in a quick exit down the path and away from the miserable little bastards.
We left the park and drove down the road to a Home Depot where we blocked traffic and got a propane bottle refill for the barbecue. After a short fuel stop, we headed back to the Invader for the evening. Sunsets here are pretty grand. We leave tomorrow for Ajo, AZ, near Organ Pipe National Monument.