Sunday, April 19, 2009

Adventures in the wash

Tucson is surrounded by a very unique and wonderful national park called Saguaro National Park, which is full of tall saguaro cactus, dense enough to look like a cactus army marching along the landscape of the southern arizona desert. We really like to get out to the trails to explore and be out amongst the cactus and the desert wildflowers.

Yesterday we did a hike down to Tanque Verde wash, northeast of Tucson. For those of you who aren't familiar with southern Arizona or with washes, they are basically a desert term for a every-once-and-a-while flowing river bed. Everything around here is pretty much called a wash, because they only flow when rain falls, either in the Tucson valley or in the mountains around. Otherwise, there is no such thing as a river around here in Tucson.

On our hike, Lindsey took a lot of great pictures of the plant life and views of the Tanque Verde Wash area. I've included some of the best she took here. There was a little bit of water down in the wash from rain in the valley and snow in the mountains the weekend before. It provided an opportunity to try to get Sadie to 'explore' in the pools a little bit.