Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

I must preface this post with the truth that I left my camera back at camp, so I am using the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Instagram pictures in place of my lack there of.

On my final full day in the Tucson area I visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum which is right up the road from the campground I have stayed this week.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a 98-acre zoo, aquarium, botanical garden, natural history museum, publisher, and art gallery founded in 1952. Located just west of Tucson, Arizona, it features two miles of walking paths traversing 21 acres  of desert landscape. – Wiki

Upon arrival I had quickly realized that this is not your average museum. I was expecting  single indoor area with some displays, but as it turns out this is more of a zoo and botanical garden than a museum. Sprawled across the desert with paved walk ways is display after display. Many having nothing to do with the desert at all. For instance, there was an entire section dedicated to animals of the sea. I found this odd considering the name and that it is known as the #1 attraction in the Tucson area.

Other displays, such as the bee and butterfly displays, were simple and  well thought out planting of the specific plants that would attract each of the insects, although I did not see a single bee when I was there. Other displays were very zoo-like but depressing in that there was nothing in them. The wolf display? Empty. The aviary? A half dozen non-local birds. The Bighorn sheep? Gone. The tortoise? Hibernating…. yea,  hibernating they say. And many more of the displays simply lacked any “umph” to justify the $19.50 per adult admission. Basically, if they had advertised that half the displays would be empty or “under construction” I would have asked if I could pay half-price as well.

However, at the end of the loop trail (by the way, I went the wrong way by accident), after the empty wolf enclosure, was their star attraction; the mountain lion. Now, I’ve seen a few in other zoos and what-not, but this one was active and playful at the time I happened to be walking past making it even more of a blunder that I forgot my camera.