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Picacho State Park —> Lake Pleasant Regional Park


After the Grand Canyon trip and a night in the Jerome Grand Hotel in Jerome AZ we drove to Picacho State Park. The Saguaro cacti along the drive and then at the park are incredible. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for where they grow arms. The cactus lives for 100 to 200 years and only sprouts arms past age 50. It grows flowers at age 40 though. For me, it does not get tiring admiring the different variations of this amazing plant.
   The next day we took it easy in the hot morning and then headed to Biosphere 2, an hour away. It was great to see B2 in person since I talk about it when teaching ecology. The lung room (actually there are 2 for redundancy) was very cool. The several 1000 pound disk that is attached and surrounded by the 1/4” rubber membrane is supported by the fact that the pressure inside is just 1 psi greater than outside. The lung allows the air inside to expand without breaking windows everywhere. We got to see it move down a few inches when the tour guide opened the door and the air rushed out — it was like a hurricane in the doorway!
   The next day we awoke early to go horseback riding in Tucson at Houston Horseback Riding. Thanks Patricia Reyes for suggesting this activity! My horse was named Too-see-mee. At one point he gently lay down in the sand with me on him!  Bobbi, the tour guide was astounded and apologetic but I didn’t mind and I was unhurt. She thought he had perhaps forgotten he had a rider on him — which wouldn’t be hard as I was being unassertive with him. 
   We saw a rattlesnake on the ride and many cacti — we rode through Saguaro National Park. The cacti were again gorgeous. The whole family really enjoyed riding. After riding we had 3+ hours to drive to Phoenix to our campground: Lake Pleasant Regional Park.

   On the drive Amy was telling us how the park has burros (wild donkeys). Nevertheless, we were astounded when 8 or so burros slowly passed through our own campsite while munching on grass. I even got to pet one that hung around a little longer. The burros can be heard braying loudly at all times of day here. Our campsite is also located on the lake, which is lucky that the water level is at around its highest because we had a cooling family swim upon arriving last night. The temperature on the car’s thermometer indicated up to 40 degrees Celsius at one point — the highest we’ve seen to date. I must say that I love this kind of dry heat compared to humid heat of Ontario. The lake provides drinking water for all of the surrounding communities (it is an artificial lake). The campground also has lovely Saguaros.




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  1. Lightsmith13 May 2019 at 11:05

    Great fun! Lucy looks particularly prickly in one of those photos! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lightsmith13 May 2019 at 11:10

    So many Burros! Reminds me of the Tom Waits spoken line "It is illegal to hunt donkeys in Arizona. So I left Arizona".

    ReplyDelete

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