Scottsdale... almost

This morning my mom and I took Sadie for a walk giving Tom time to work on his paper and leaving my dad to make breakfast burritos.  Once we were full and cleaned up for the day we hopped in the car and drove up to Scottsdale.  We intended on watching the Seahawks first game of the post-season in a sports bar and have a look around the area.

As we were driving along we came to an area with an impressive rock formation and lots of cacti.  We decided to pull off at what looked like a vantage point, but it turned out we stumbled upon the Desert Botanical Gardens.

It was amazing, the best stumble upon ever!  We walked past so many different cacti I began to wonder how many varieties exist.  Google just told me there are at least 626 different varieties of cacti.  This includes the "boojum tree," who's name comes from the end of Louis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark:

"Ohh" and "aww" we exclaimed followed by, "I like this one," or "I like that one."  All four of us had a wonderful time exploring the impressive gardens.  I liked the desert trail loop best as it really felt like we were hiking through the desert.  We even learned a bit about the native americans' survival techniques.

All too soon we had to leave to make it to Scottsdale in time for the game.  Her's some of the best of what we saw:

 

 

 

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