Tucson to Tempe

This morning we said goodbye to our hosts and their adorable dogs ...

... and headed to Saguaro National Park. There's an east part and a west part on either side of Tucson; we went to the east part and drove the eight mile scenic loop, and about four miles in we parked and biked down a short two mile dirt trail. There were a lot of cactuses!

The trail led us to a dry riverbed that we followed to an old limestone kiln, where I took these photos of Josh!

Josh was extremely excited to see the largest airplane graveyard in the country so we drove around the perimeter of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base for about an hour, looking really sketchy taking photos of the planes with my DSLR. Josh loved it!

We arrived in Tempe and explored Arizona State University and a neat shopping and restaurant district near the campus. We biked down to Tempe Town Lake and took some photos as the sun was setting.

We met our hosts, Emily and Scott, at La Bocca, a very nice Italian restaurant in that restaurant district. Scott is from England and is getting his PhD in biology, writing his dissertation on urban influence on the mating seasons of birds, and Emily works at a nature center. They both love wildlife and are very knowledgeable about flora and fauna in the southwest, and talking to them was really interesting! Josh and I split a truffle mushroom pizza and Emily and Scott treated us to beers from a local brewery, Four Peaks. After dinner we just talked to our hosts in their living room for a few hours before getting to bed!

Josh's high from today was seeing the airplane graveyard, and my high was dinner with our hosts: they were so nice! Josh's low was trying to find parking for dinner, and my low was the unlivable conditions of the desert... it really seems like no one should be out there living on dry sand, with prickly vegetation, among dangerous snakes!! Josh and I shared the same "ho" today... we realized that Josh is addicted to dogs. Normally he is the one rushing me to get ready and out the door, but this morning I kept finding him playing with the dogs rather than packing up. He even left me in the car to do a "last minute check" to make sure we didn't leave anything... but just played with the dogs for another ten minutes.