1207. Go to Saguaro National Park in Tucson

 When I started planning our Arizona trip without baseball, my cousin told me about the Pima Air Museum in Tucson. I decided we should check it out along with Saguaro National Park since we were going to be in Tucson and I wasn't sure when we would be there again. Plans changed and I found college baseball but still kept Saguaro National Park on the agenda.

Part of my wanting to go to Saguaro was that we are planning on going to South Dakota in September and would need a National Park pass to help with park fees. Since I would need one in September, might as well get one now and get our money out of it. The Annual America the Beautiful National Park Pass is $80 and covers most entrance fees into the National Park System and is good for one year. Picking up one this year made sense. We had one a few years ago when we went to the Grand Canyon and really didn't get our money's worth out of it, this year we would definitely get our money out of it. 

Saguaro National Park is split into the East and West sections with the city of Tucson in the middle. My original plan was to visit the east side because it was near the museum but with going to the baseball game, the west side made sense. 

To get to the Visitor Center to buy our park pass and get my stamp, is about 20 miles into the park. We drove up a winding, hilly road through the National Park, then back to public land, and back on National Park land before reaching the visitor center. You can actually view this part of the park without paying but once you get to the visitor center and anything beyond you need to pay. 

We bought our park pass, which I immediately misplaced (and found in the same spot I left it), and got my stamp. Then we explored a few short trails around the visitor center. The hubby was grumpy by the gravel trail. 

My original plan was to drive the scenic route through the park which was a dirt road but do to bad planning and not realizing the visitor center was so far into the park, we really didn't have time before the game. So we took a different road out of the park and still saw plenty of cacti.

I would love to go back and explore more of the park but then again it's just a bunch of big cacti. You see one cacti, you've seen them all. They all look the same. It would be nice to see them when they are flowering though. Maybe one day when we have more than 2 or 3 days in Arizona.