A day of rest from hiking

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Today I took a break from hiking and had planned a morning at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is located about 15 minutes west of downtown Tucson. Its a privately owned facility that is a combination zoo desert garden, and museum. Let me first get my negative impressions of the place out of the way. First, some of the displays contained fake items. For instance, there were some "manufactured" fossils and even though they were displayed as such, it was somewhat disappointing. Luckily most of the displays were real such as the gem stones and the really, really, really old rocks. Secondly, many of the displays containing the wild animals were not large enough. For instance in an area there were 2 wolves and both were just pacing around their area in a circular pattern...over and over and over. It was quite sad. I guess over the years I've slowly grown to dislike zoo's for this reason.

However, there was a lot to see at the Sonora Desert Museum. I kind of breezed through the place in about 3 hours, but could of spent a lot more time there. The hummingbird area was kind of a challenge to get a good picture (which I didnt) and they had docents scattered throughout the different areas giving demonstrations and talks. So yeah I guess overall its worth a visit if you're in the area. I didnt take too many pictures of this area as quite frankly I just wanted to walk around a place without thinking about taking pictures for a change but there are a few.

Perfectly timed just as I finished my tour of the Desert Museum, Julia gives me a call to meet up for lunch. So we agree to meet up back in downtown Tucson. To my surprise, she had the day off so we decided to go out to Tombstone, AZ. This time there was no getting lost or dirt roads involved in finding Tombstone. I was warned again by Julia that this is a real touristy type place, but I still wanted to see it. For the most part, the town has a lot of shops pertaining to the old west, but they also had shows of gunfights and such which we didnt see that day, probably because it was a weekday. I did in fact succumb to the touristy atmosphere and bought a book entitled "Roughing It" by Mark Twain inwhich Mr Twain tells of his travels across the West and Hawaii.

One place in Tombstone that everyone should check out is the Courthouse Museum. We kind of just stumbled upon it by accident, but its worth the few bucks to go inside. Its the towns original courthouse and has a couple floors of displays including information about some of the towns former residents as well as items from the era. I particularly enjoyed the display of different types of barbed wire. Who knew?

I really enjoyed my time in Tucson and especially spending time with Julia. But I had to move on to my next destination. With mixed emotions of both sadness and anticipation of what was to come on my trip I leave Tucson for my next destination.

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Photos

A cat of some sort
Unfortunately I didnt take the time to write down what kind of cat this was.