After stopping in Phoenix to go to the amazing Heard Museum, and have dinner with friends at the Blue Nile Cafe, an Ethiopian restaurant next to the university (it was excellent), we drove on to Tucson.
Tucson was a really nice surprise. We stayed at the Westward Look Resort for two nights and found several cools things to do. Our favorite was the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. At one point during our visit, Alison says "every time I think of something that would be really nice for this museum to have, I find it here." For example, every bathroom had a sunscreen dispenser in it, and a reminder to make sure you use enough of it.
One of many nice features here was this little "archaeologist for a day" area for kids. They could hammer or brush dirt off of "fossils" and discover them.
Possibly the coolest animal of the trip was this Mexican Wolf. There is a captive breeding program going on to reintroduce them - the estimate is that there are only about fifty of them left in the wild.
One of those features Alison wished for was ice cream - the only drawback to the museum is that it's outside and it's in Tucson, so it was again blistering hot. The ice cream didn't stand a chance.
There's also an art gallery inside the museum, which was featuring nature photos when we were visiting. Inside the gallery there is a children's art table. Here are Eero and Cielo's pieces (they decided to take them home instead of hanging them next to the other kids' coloring).
Cielo, Vernon and Eero just outside the gallery but still inside the museum.
At the hotel, we had one nice dinner, and the standout was pecan bread with prickly pear butter. The butter was very sweet, as apparently the fruit of the cactus is. Here's a nice close up that Alison took of said cactus with fruit on it.
After a day walking around in the heat, it was time for more swimming!
