We signed up for a guided tour
today of the Sonora Desert and a wildlife rehabilitation center.
The tour company, Pink Adventure
Tours, picked us up in a cute pink Mercedes van, and after picking up another
woman from New Jersey at a nearby hotel, we drove into the McDowell Mountains
east of town.
Our first stop was at the McDowell
Sonoran Preserve. The preserve is essentially
a desert park maintained by the City of Scottsdale. It is a huge area with lots of hiking,
equestrian and mountain bike trails. It
is well maintained and our .4 mile loop trail had excellent examples of desert flora
and fauna. Our guide and driver, Amanda,
was very knowledgeable and provided a lot of information about the area and its
desert environment.
Our next stop was a wildlife
rehabilitation center that is privately owned and only open to tour
groups. The center was founded by a
local woman and has since grown into a foundation that is the center for
rehabilitation of animals, mostly indigenous to the local area.
The animals at the center have
either been abused and/or are unsuitable for release back into the wild and
will have to spend the rest of their lives either here or at a similar
facility. We saw raptors, including
horned owls, Harris Hawks and Red Tail Hawks.
Animals included Mexican Grey Wolves, coyotes, bobcats, red and grey
foxes, javalinas, deer, and mountain lions.
It was a very interesting tour and we learned a lot of new things as
well getting a refresher course in desert lore that we had learned about in
other desert tours and did not immediately remember. That’s the beauty of traveling as you get
older, you get to learn a lot of new things again.
We got back to the RV after dark,
cooked a tri-tip on the grill, had some excellent Sonoma red wine, and went to
bed much later than normal.
Tomorrow, we will go back to the
Musical Instrument Museum to see the exhibits we missed before and a concert
there tomorrow night. Friday, we drive up
to Sedona for an overnight trip without the RV, come back to Phoenix on
Saturday, and leave on Sunday for Florida.
The adventure continues.
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