SAGUARO NATIONAL PARK

Before we left the Casa Grande area at the end of December, we took a day trip to the Saguaro National Park west of Tucson.  There are 2 separate parks—one west of Tucson and one on the east side, both with the same type of geography and vegetation.  We started out at the park visitor center and watched a 15 minute slide show presentation on the different aspects of the park and some of the native cultural history.  They thought that the saguaro cacti looked like people standing in the ravines and on the mountains.  What do you think?

We drove around on the various loop drives and took some side hikes which brought us closer to the cacti.  There were trails up to 10 miles long but we hadn’t planned for that kind of lengthy hike.

The saguaros live about 150 years and it takes them about 70 years before they start sending out “arms” from their main stems.  They also start out growing in the shade of other plants like the mesquite bushes so they are protected from the elements and small animals in the early stages of their lives.

  

The southern half of Arizona has saguaros scattered over the landscape in both small pockets and large concentrations so it’s easy to understand why it is one of the state’s symbols and the saguaro cactus flower is the state flower.  Here in the Yuma area, we don’t see many saguaros but as soon as you cross the mountains a few miles to the east, you see them sparsely dotted across the landscape.