This past Saturday Jonathan and I wanted to go to a festival at a national park here. I look up events happening on the weekends at Tucson's travel site (click on that if you want to go to it), and I saw that they were having a Mexican Heritage Festival at Saguaro National Park. They said that they were having mariachi and folklorio dancers which I have always wanted to see! Those are the dancers in the gorgeous colorful dresses that twirl around, and I think everyone knows what a mariachi band is.
So, Saturday morning we woke up and sat around lazily for awhile before getting ready to go to the park. Well, the website did not say that there was a specific schedule for these things; so when we got there, the dancers and music were all over! I was so disappointed, but really the "festival" wasn't much but literally 3 tables and hardly anybody there :( The park was still open for free though (usually it cost $10 to get in...but worth it!) so we decided to go ahead and just drive through the park.
It was such a gorgeous day and the temperature was in the mid 70s which was nice, so we rode through with the sunroof open and the windows down :D The views were gorgeous!! There were cacti everywhere and lots of overlooks to stop and get out and take pictures, which was of course the best :) The trail was a small winding one car road, and it took us about an hour and a half to go through.
There was one place where a few cars were all backed up with people were getting out...we didn't know what was going on, but I got out and someone told me that a person had spotted a yellow speckled gila (like "Hiela") monster! It hid though so nobody could really get any pictures. We were surprised by how many bikers went through on their bicycles (think racing bikes like in the Tour de France)! But we shouldn't have been surprised because they are everywhere right now. I wouldn't want to bike it though because it's so steep and the road curves up into the mountains and then back down.
We really enjoyed seeing all of the cool and unusual cacti that were scattered all around. Some we had never seen before and were really wierd looking. The cacti covered the ground like grass would, and the black patches you would see on the mountain side are cacti and not trees like other mountains! It was such a nice relaxing day of exploring a new place we've never been before :)
Oh, and afterwards we were starving, so we went to a place called My Big Fat Greek Restaurant that was really cool. The food was delicious, and the servers danced in a circle like in the movie and broke plates! It was fun to see.
So, here's the pictures!: http://picasaweb.google.com/greeneblog/ACactusMountainAdventure?authkey=Gv1sRgCJKy_5j10pTT9AE&feat=directlink
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