Scenic drive

Went for a Sunday drive today, including Cookie and Muffin, taking the scenic route to visit a couple of campgrounds close to Tucson, thought it would be nice to stay in a little different area next year. The trip was awesome and interesting, we had driven part of the route last year and we love how the vegetation changes along the route. Travelling down highway 82 west to Sonita into wine country, west of the Whetstone Mountains, the area is open grass, turn north on 83 and into the mountains lots of green bushes, cactus and soon you see the large Saguaro which does not grow at all in the area of AZ around Tombstone and Sierra Vista. I was disappointed last year when we arrived here as I expected to see the majestic Saguaro but found out they do not survive in areas with any frost, or at least very heavy frost. Travelling to Tucson along I10 you see very few also, but along highway 83 and I19 as you get closer to Tucson, there are hundreds, they dot the mountain sides like huge tall sticks, can take up to 75 years to grown arms and some survive for 150 years! I tried to take a picture but the distance was too great. The blossom of the Saguaro is Arizona’s state flower. Follow this link for information and view pictures of this magnificent plant, there is a picture of the forest of Saguaro Cacti - Tucson, Arizona, that we saw but couldn’t get a decent picture. : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saguaro_Forest_-_Tucson_Arizona_-_Relic38.JPG
We also saw pink Prickly Pear Cactus, which we have never seen before! Green Prickly Pear cactus grow like weeds in the Tucson area, we have not seen any in the wild in this area only planted one and then only green. We do have them in Southern Alberta but again only green. One area along our drive the hills of the mountains were covered with them, very beautiful. I looked up information on the Internet but only found pictures of green Prickly Pear, but was told by Jim that Prickly Pear cactus are in many colours in parts of Texas. We did take a picture of the pink variety at one of the parks we visited; sure glad we took the picture. For more information on the Prickly Pear click the links below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opuntia

http://www.billcasselman.com/unpublished_works/pricklypear_cactus_nopalitos.htm
We saw miles and miles of old mines, some for sure appeared to be copper mines, and of course SW AZ is or should I say was a huge mining area. I tried to find more information on the web, mostly found technical geology information and the fact the area is a combination of many mines owned by many different companies, at least 13 different mines in the area.

The mines are terraced, in the picture to the right what you are seeing is not a mountain but what was left from mining.

This is a small pink Prickly Pear compared to some we saw growing in the wild.

Oh yes, the parks we checked out just cannot compete with Tombstone Territories RV Park, the first one we checked out was Desert Trails and looked good on the web, but campers are crammed in like sardines in a can! The second one Diamond J had wider spaces and was nicely landscaped but the sites were way to short.
The parks were a disappointed but the scenic drive was awesome.