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| Entrance to the Ironwood Terrace restaurant |
National Park that Liz and I went to a couple of days ago. The museum was
founded in 1952 but somehow everything looks brand new. It is more a garden
than a traditional museum, plus an art gallery and a natural history museum.
Their website says it is the most popular Tucson attraction and “one of the top
10 museums in the United States”.
It’s a great place to see desert plants, flowers, animals
and birds. I especially enjoyed the walk-in aviary where we were able to get
close ups of the birds – both native and exotic. There was also a separate hummingbird
aviary where we were able to stand six feet from a hummer on her nest. But, the
best bird watching was on the café terrace where a Pyhruuloxia landed on Liz’s
binoculars that were lying on our café table.
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| Pyhruuloxia on a tile counter |
The museum has a nice assortment of exhibits for a
diverse range of species including spiders, toads, snakes, big horn sheep, beavers,
and even sting rays. We didn’t make it to the cat exhibit area.
The thing that made this day exceptional though was that
it was delightfully cool all day and on the drive back we enjoyed those big, poufy
white clouds set against a vibrant blue sky – the sort of perfect clouds that
are so rare in the Bay Area.
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| Kestral on a docents glove |
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| White Phlox |
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| Whiptail Lizard |
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| Detail from a larger art piece |
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| Bromiliad on a branch inside the walk-in aviary |
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| Western Tanager with a worm inside the aviary |
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| Southwest Coral Bean |
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| Yucca flower |
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| Dramatic light near Liz's home |
Just found out about your blog and am playing catch-up. Beautiful photos!
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