10/12: Ying and Yang
Category: General
Posted by: The Agnew Family
Today the girls did their own thing while the boys went off to spend the day at the Pima Air and Space Museum.
Our thing included doing some jobs around the trailer like cleaning, baking cookies and walking the dogs, then a bit of shopping and lunch and finally a tour to the Saguaro National Park East. In case your interested Saguaro is pronounced sa-WAH-ro. This cactus has really grabbed my attention.
Saguaros are a very slow growing cactus. In Saguaro National Park, studies indicate that a saguaro grows between 1 and 1.5 inches in the first eight years of its life. This one is in the garden at the visitors center. As baby saguaros are small, look like a hedge hog cactus and grow under other trees they are very hard to find.
The photo on the left is of a "teenager" (that's what Carol and I decided to call them), probably over 20 years old. The photo on the right is in the garden at the visitor's center. We were shown a photo of the cactus when it was 50 years old in 1966 --- it didn't have any arms and was about 6 feet tall. Now 46 years later it is about 25 feet tall and has arms. That's Carol looking up at the cactus to give you an idea of it's height.
There are a lot of other cacti in the park like this Barrel Cactus
and this Staghorn Cholla.
An adult saguaro is generally considered to be about 125 years of age. It may weigh 6 tons or more and be as tall as 50 feet. The average life span of a saguaro is probably 150 - 175 years of age. However, biologists believe that some plants may live over 200 years.
Saguaro cacti only grow in the Sonora Desert and only in portions of the desert. The range of the saguaro is limited by freezing temperatures in winter and by elevation. A couple of years ago Tucson experience a few days where the temperatures drop to around 14F damaging and killing a number of the saguaro.
Ed and John left the trailer by 9:15 and didn't return to 5:45 --- I think they had a good day. The museum offers two hour long walking tours through the hangers and an hour long tram tour through the outdoor exhibits. The boys did them all plus walked through the entire place on their own. Ed chose the following photos from the over 350 photos that he took.
Prott & Whitney Wasp 28 cylinder radial CornCob
Starr Bumble Bee, worlds smallest true plane
Microjet, worlds smallest jet plane. It was seen in the James Bond,007 movie Octopussy.
20 Kilo-Ton nuke
Super Guppy
This plane has 10 engines, six turning (propeller) and four burning (jet)
Sikorsky ch-54a Skycrane
SR-71 Blackbird
B-24 Liberator
B-25J Mitchell
German V1 Buzz Bomb
Our thing included doing some jobs around the trailer like cleaning, baking cookies and walking the dogs, then a bit of shopping and lunch and finally a tour to the Saguaro National Park East. In case your interested Saguaro is pronounced sa-WAH-ro. This cactus has really grabbed my attention.
Saguaros are a very slow growing cactus. In Saguaro National Park, studies indicate that a saguaro grows between 1 and 1.5 inches in the first eight years of its life. This one is in the garden at the visitors center. As baby saguaros are small, look like a hedge hog cactus and grow under other trees they are very hard to find.
The photo on the left is of a "teenager" (that's what Carol and I decided to call them), probably over 20 years old. The photo on the right is in the garden at the visitor's center. We were shown a photo of the cactus when it was 50 years old in 1966 --- it didn't have any arms and was about 6 feet tall. Now 46 years later it is about 25 feet tall and has arms. That's Carol looking up at the cactus to give you an idea of it's height.
There are a lot of other cacti in the park like this Barrel Cactus
and this Staghorn Cholla.
An adult saguaro is generally considered to be about 125 years of age. It may weigh 6 tons or more and be as tall as 50 feet. The average life span of a saguaro is probably 150 - 175 years of age. However, biologists believe that some plants may live over 200 years.
Saguaro cacti only grow in the Sonora Desert and only in portions of the desert. The range of the saguaro is limited by freezing temperatures in winter and by elevation. A couple of years ago Tucson experience a few days where the temperatures drop to around 14F damaging and killing a number of the saguaro.
Ed and John left the trailer by 9:15 and didn't return to 5:45 --- I think they had a good day. The museum offers two hour long walking tours through the hangers and an hour long tram tour through the outdoor exhibits. The boys did them all plus walked through the entire place on their own. Ed chose the following photos from the over 350 photos that he took.
Prott & Whitney Wasp 28 cylinder radial CornCob
Starr Bumble Bee, worlds smallest true plane
Microjet, worlds smallest jet plane. It was seen in the James Bond,007 movie Octopussy.
20 Kilo-Ton nuke
Super Guppy
This plane has 10 engines, six turning (propeller) and four burning (jet)
Sikorsky ch-54a Skycrane
SR-71 Blackbird
B-24 Liberator
B-25J Mitchell
German V1 Buzz Bomb