Funny Foot Farm

While I was birding Sweetwater Wetlands, the family met our friends at Christopher Columbus Park to enjoy the view while Asher fished. Arizona requires a fishing license for children over 10, but fortunately it's only $5 per year for them.

Then Yair joined us for a visit to the Funny Foot Farm, an exotic zoo where you are invited to feed and pet most of the animals! It's reasonably priced and holds an impressive collection. It's not just a normal petting zoo, you actually get a behind the scenes tour of the facility, stepping into the enclosures of many animals. 

The kids really liked the Patagonian Maras. They kind of look like a mix between a rabbit, a deer and a kangaroo! 

The African porcupines were my favorite! They only have quills on their back half so it looks a little like they're wearing a skirt.

They have great birds here: Guineas, Currasows, Pheasants.

If capybaras are your favorite, they offer a special opportunity to spend extra time with them. Have you ever seen a capybara's feet? Pretty interesting.

This is the only place in the US you can touch, maybe even see these next two animals: 

Red-rumped Agouti and the Chacoan Mara.

This warthog absolutely loved attention! When you start petting her, she'd flop over and soak it up. As soon as you stopped she'd jump back up and continue on with her day.

This enormous rabbit is only a year old! So soft and sweet!

After the tour, you're free to spend unlimited time with the goats, pigs, birds and ostriches. Your admission price includes three cups of food to feed the various animals.

Definitely a fun place to visit, and if you live locally, you can hire the zoo to come to you for a party and for a great learning experience! 

Saguaro, Saguaro Everywhere!

Saguaro National Park looks very similar to Sabino Canyon. Cacti everywhere. We drove the loop which offers many different views of the park, before stopping to hike the Freeman Homestead Trail.

Saguaro NP is home to 25 different species of cactus. The ones we noticed most were 

of course the saguaro (sah-wah-roe), the teddybear chollo, prickly pear, and chainfruit cholla.

We thought the saguaros look like people. Here's Asher doing his best impression of this one. 

The cacti are so thick trails narrow in parts that it made me nervous having the kids hiking so close to them. I stepped backwards into a barrel cactus a couple years ago and it just recently stopped hurting, so I'm especially careful with the kids around them. Fortunately we had no issues.

Overlooking the Sonoran Desert

We found a few of these saguaro "skeletons" which look pretty cool. The rangers told us
these are very valuable and they sometimes catch people trying to smuggle them out of the park. 

Saguaro grow at different rates depending on the climate and precipitation. Here they begin growing flowers after around 35 years and it takes about 50-70 years for them to start growing "arms. They are considered an adult at 125 years and will continue growing up to 50 feet tall and weighing over 6 tons! This one that Asher is checking out is probably well over 125 years old!

We found a few bird nests built among the cacti and were excited to find four little blue eggs in one.

To cool them off, Daddy put water in their hats. They thought this was great fun.

Feeling refreshed, apparently it was time for Journey to dance it out down the trail. 

Once we made it back to the truck it was time to break out a watermelon for snack.

Arizona's Sabino Canyon

Daddy explored Sabino Canyon in the past, and now it was time to return as a family. It's a National Recreation Area on the east side of Tucson. They conveniently offer shuttles to take you thru the canyons because it's so hot here. We opted to hike it ourselves since it was only in the low 90s. 

We saw a bunch of these Roundtail Ground Squirrels running around. They were so cute and make a cute little 

squeaky noise. We were lucky enough to see a baby run up to its mommy and watch her feed him (in photo below).

The Greater Earless Lizard. We had fun watching these run along the trail.

More saguaro (sah-wah-roe) than I've ever seen!

Watching a squirrel who is watching them.

Asher dropped his sunglasses over the edge. Made for an interesting retrieval.

They earned another Junior Ranger badge!