4.22.11 Spring
in the desert.

It is spring in the Sonoran Desert.
Any place else and it would be summer-like weather. It is the perfect time to be here with the
day temps are in the 80’s and 90’s and night-time temps in the 50’s 60’s. To make
it even better the flowers are starting to show in the desert. The several of Saguaro Cacti are getting
blooms. It started several weeks ago
with one or two Saguaro getting buds on them.
And then, one or two of the buds started blooming. The blooms, which appear at the top of the
cacti and at the end of the arms, come out only at night and last until
mid-morning of the next day. As you travel through the desert right now you
will notice that many Saguaros have buds appearing on them. In a few weeks the desert will be covered
with blooms.

In addition, the
Organ Pipe Cactus is also starting to bud and bloom too. Their blooms are a few weeks behind the Saguaros. They also are night bloomers. Their blooms are even shorter-lived, with the
blooms lasting only until the early hours of the morning. R and I
got up at 6am to drive into Tucson
on Thursday. On the way out we stopped
at the Visitor Center to see a blooming Organ Pipe
Cactus.

If that isn’t
enough the Chollas are starting to bloom.
The Staghorn Cholla are getting redish brown blooms and Buckhorn Cholla blooms
are yellow. The Prickley Pear are
covered with new pads and blooms.

The bottom line is
that the desert is at it’s best right now and there is no one to enjoy it. The visitors have stopped coming. With the coming of the month of April,
visitation dropped off dramatically. The
campground, which has 120 sites, is down to a dozen or so occupied sites. And those are being used by Europeans. It seems that about 75% of the people that
come into the visitor center are from Europe.

If you are thinking
of a beautiful warm place to visit, during the month of April, this might be it.