Saguaro National Park: Welcome to the Sonoran Desert

I love the desert. I love all four of North America’s deserts with their unique characters and personalities. As we arrived in the Sonoran Desert, we eased our way in gently with a wonderful introduction to this diverse place’s plants and animals with a visit to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum before driving to the heart of Saguaro National Park’s Tucson Mountain District.

Elsa, understanding what all this means, is not pleased.

Particularly for long weekend trips, Sean and I generally prefer to fly out after work, so that we can wake up on the ground ready for adventure at our destination.

On Wednesday, November 9, 2022, I caught a Lyft to O’Hare at 6pm.

After easily checking my bag and passing through security, I met up with Sean, who had come from his office in the Loop. Our gate was next to a wine bar, adjacent to Vosges chocolate, and across from Frontera.

How convenient, all around!

After dining and drinking, and packing away some chocolate for our trip, we boarded our flight. We had the exit row all to ourselves, which was delightful

We were staying at the Graduate Tucson, adjacent to the University of Arizona campus, where we arrived, unloaded our rental, and checked in at 11:30pm.

Our room was cozy, but we’d have to wait for the morning to check out our view. We were exhausted.

Next morning, Thursday, November 10, 2022, we got to see our view as the sun rose over the Rincon Mountains, part of Saguaro National Park.

Neither of us had slept particularly well—maybe five hours each—so we enjoyed a fairly leisurely morning at the hotel before heading out to a brunch of huevos rancheros and breakfast burritos at Five Points.

After brunch, it was time to explore the desert. Our plan was to visit the smaller western unit, Tucson Mountain District, that afternoon, including being in the Park for sunset around 5:30pm.

But before the Park, we headed to the splendid Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Pima County’s Tucson Mountain Park, which protects the southern portion of the Tucson Mountains, south of the National Park unit.

The museum is a blend of zoo, botanical garden, and natural history museum, focused exclusively on the flora and fauna of the Sonoran Desert.

Rock Squirrel (an interloper in the Black Bear exhibit)

As fun as it was to see the charismatic megafauna, the richness of the museum is that it is surrounded by federally and county protected desert, offering an immersive interpretation of the landscape.

Saguaro National Park from Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Indeed, the view to the north from the museum looks directly into the Red Hills within the boundary of the National Park.

The experience is completely different from zoos that wall themselves off from surrounding urban or suburban neighborhoods.

Here, in a zoo context, I finally got to see some live Javelinas. These little guys are my wildlife-species-viewing White Whales of our National Parks trips. Sean and I have seen Grizzlies, Bison, Mountain Goats, Dall Sheep, Golden Eagles, Bald Eagles, Humpback Whales, Pronghorn, and on and on in the National Parks. But not once have we seen a Javelina. Maybe on this desert Park trip we’d be lucky. Maybe, just maybe, this would be the lucky adventure.

The botanical garden area of the museum was an excellent introduction to the many species of cactus we’d be seeing over the next several days.

There was an art gallery.

And a hummingbird aviary.

Even nautical creatures from the (surprisingly close) Gulf of California.

Near the end of our visit, we even spotted a Chuckwalla just hanging out, not part of the museum’s collection.

Again, I cannot overstate how worthwhile a visit to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is. They are also a research hub and engage in an array of conservation programs and initiatives. And they publish the encyclopedic A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert.

After a very rich two hours at the museum, we were ready to head on to the Park.

We drove the couple minutes to the closest entrance to Saguaro’s Tucson Mountain District. We arrived at 1:30, which gave us about four hours to explore before sunset.

At Red Hills Visitor Center, our first stop, we stamped our passports, and I inquired with the Ranger about where we might go to have a chance at seeing Javelinas.

“They’re basically raccoons,” he replied. “So you’re gonna see them near neighborhoods.”

On a map, he pointed out a soccer field and a student apartments complex near the Park boundaries.

He also pointed out a barbecue joint.

“They’re attracted to the smell. But they don’t know that they’re the barbecue.

“I also see them up by Biosphere 2 almost every night.”

Within the Park proper, though, he said to be alert and watch for them in washes.

Ok, washes it would be!

Before we left, we watched the 15-minute long Park film. It was focused entirely on the Tohono O’odham people and their culture and kinship with the ancestors who called Saguaro home, as well as their relationship with the Saguaro Cactus itself.

Our next stop was the nearby Desert Discovery Trail.

A short, accessible, paved nature trail (with cool, durable metal signs), it serves as an introduction for Park visitors to the ecology of the northern Sonoran Desert. For us it felt like we were slowly easing our way into the desert landscape from museum to visitor center to nature trail.

We noted that someone had crossed out “600 million” on the signage about the area’s geologic history because, you know, TEH BIBLE. Good grief.

(Note: I’m not going to caption images of Saguaros in these posts. This is what they look like. I will be posting literally hundreds of photos of them.)

Although they are used as iconographic shorthand for the American Southwest, Saguaros only grow in one of the North America’s deserts, the Sonoran. And within the Sonoran, they only grow in a limited portion in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. They general grow at elevations from sea level to 4,500 feet.

Saguaros can grow up to fifty feet tall, but they grow very slowly. They are usually sixty to seventy-five before their first branches develop.

Their pleats allow them to absorb and retain as much water as possible from desert rains.

During a heavy rain, a saguaro will absorb as much water as its root system allows. To accomodate this potentially large influx of water, the pleats expand like an accordion. Conversely, when the desert is dry, the saguaro uses its stored water and the pleats contract. Because the majority of a saguaro is made up of water, a large plant may weigh 80 pounds for each foot of its main trunk. This tremendous weight is supported by a circular skeleton of interconnected, woody ribs. The number of ribs inside the plant corresponds to the number of pleats on the outside of the plant. As the saguaro grows, the ribs will occasionally fork, and the corresponding pleat will also fork at the same place.

– National Park Service

The metal signs are so durable that they predate the upgrade to National Park. I suspect they are from the late 1980s because we saw similar signage at Great Basin National Park, established in 1986.