December 6 - 8, 2025
Today we visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which should honestly be called “Everything the Desert Could Possibly Be, Plus a Gift Shop.” It’s a zoo, botanical garden, aquarium, art gallery, and history museum all mashed into one sprawling complex. Basically, if it exists in the Sonoran Desert, they’ve slapped it into this museum.
Fun fact: there’s an aquarium because the Sonoran Desert includes the Gulf of California, a.k.a. the Sea of Cortez. Yep. The desert has ocean. This region is basically the overachiever of ecosystems.
We spent five hours there, and one of the highlights was the Raptor Free-Flight show, where they release giant birds of prey into the sky and let them swoop dramatically over the audience. One hawk flew so close to my head that its wing actually brushed my forehead. For a moment I genuinely thought I was about to be carried off like a desert mouse.
After the museum, we swung by Saguaro National Park West and… look, I don’t want to offend any saguaros, but we were seriously underwhelmed. The museum was better. Tucson Mountain Park was better. My prickly pear cactus chocolate bar from the visitor center was not better (but hey, it was chocolate), but everything else? Better. I’ve heard the East side of the park (the park is separated by Tucson) is way superior, so we’ll give the park another chance before we start slandering it too loudly.
Since it was Saturday night, we treated ourselves to a real date night: dinner at El Charro, the oldest Mexican restaurant in the United States and the inventor of the chimichanga. We had the 6 taco sampler and it did not disappoint.
The next day was church, followed by fulfilling our moral obligation to contribute at least one good deed before returning to selfishly biking. Earlier in the week we bought black garbage bags with the heroic intention of cleaning up the trash at our BLM camp. Today was the day. We double-gloved—latex underneath, leather on top—like sanitation ninjas, and collected 25 bags of garbage. 
Why so much trash? Because someone stole two garbage bins, relocated them to the entrance of the camp, and then everyone collectively decided, “Ah yes, this is now the camp dump.” Whether the trash fit inside the bins or not, whether trash was loose or bagged, all was irrelevant.
We stopped by the fire station to see if we could use their commercial dumpster. to dispose of the trash. The answer was a polite but firm no, which I understand because technically we were asking them to start a trend for all the feral garbage dumpers down the road.
The next day I called the City of Tucson and then the local BLM office. Tucson said I’d need an account and an address (neither of which a semi-homeless desert camper can casually produce), and BLM… didn’t answer the phone, return messages, or respond to email. Strong participation all around.
Meanwhile, new trash was already being piled on top of our neatly bagged trash mountain. Time was running out. So I hired a third-party junk removal guy for $150 (after my finest negotiations), and he hauled away all 25 bags plus the renegade garbage bins.
We put up polite-but-firm signs telling people this was not a dump, there was no garbage service, and to please stop treating the desert like their personal landfill.
With that civic duty done, we rewarded ourselves the best way we know how: by heading back to Tucson Mountain Park.
We rode new intermediate trails, and I rode all the washes like a pro—except for the three that George walked. If George is walking, that is my universal sign to also walk, because I know exactly how that would end if I tried: face-first in a rocky ravine. No thank you.
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