Arizona: Tuscon, Casa Grande, Petroglyphs, and the desert

This is from my trip out to Tuscon, Az. I got to see the town and the desert. There was some Western stuff to see, but I didn't go to any of them, I instead went out into the desert to check out some old Native sites, the landscape, and the Saguaro cactus which only grows in this area. 

One night I went up Mt Lemon which is to the north of Tuscon and you get to see the whole valley at night, awesome views.

This little dot is Mars when it was at full opposition which means that it was a bright red star in the sky.

Just some of the desert landscape. Although it's just sand, rocks, and some scrubs, it's gorgeous country. Most os this is from my trip up to Tonto National Forest which is northeast of Phoenix.

That little blue sliver is Lake Roosevelt, once you get closer it turns into a brilliant blue, more blue than the sky.

I was coming up to Tonto to see some cliff dwellings but I was late and the park closed so this is the best I could get out of it. Needless to say I was pretty bummed.

This is Casa Grande, meaning Grand House. It is an old Native complex made completely out of mud brick in the middle of the desert. It was built by the Hohokam people who were of the Pueblo. Casa Grande was part of a farming community who were capable of building the complex with trees from outside areas and a canal system to support farming in this area. Once the water dried up the natives left. This structure was long built and abandoned before any Europeans came through. 

The central building

Prarie Dogs

If you can make out the depression this is to believed to have been some sort of small arena for playing the local sport

While Casa Grande is impressive I love the petroglyphs even more. Petroglyphs are rock drawings from long in the past drawn by hunter gatherers. They depict hunting, the heavens, and religious symbols. There is one outcrop of rock in the Saguaro National Forest where all of these are, there are paths going up and around the outcrop so you can see most of them. Thanks to a pretty good zoom on my camera you can make them out much better. You can only see some of these from the bottom of the mound on the path. I spent quite a bit of time out here. 

A dry riverbed that the path crossed. Arizona only gets 8" of rain a year, what we can easily get in one storm sometimes. 

Dust Devil out in the distance

And now the Saguaro Cactus, these are the tallest cactus in the world and only grow in this area which really isn't all that large. I didn't have anything for scale, but they can grow to over 60 ft tall, I didn't see any that tall though, maybe 20 ft.