Then we took a drive through the Tucson Mountain Park and looked at all the saguaro cactus. We looked mostly for the odd shaped ones like this one. There were hundreds of them. It is illegal to cut down a saguaro. The tall ones in this photo are at least 60 years old.

Now they call it Tuscon Mountain. What they call mountains we would call hills. We will go ahead and let Tuscon call them mountains but we ex-utahans know the difference.

We wanted to see the Tuscon Mountains but we also wanted to see Old Tucson. We drove all the way out to no mans land to find it. Once we got there are read up on all it had we decided we didn't have enough time to see the whole thing. We would need a good half day or more to do everything that Old Tucson has to offer. So we took a photo out front and briefly visited the gift shop and left vowing to return again someday to get the full experience. We had made plans for lunch that couldn't be cancelled.

KON TIKI

Serves polynesian style food. If you love Tiki's this is the place for you.

If you like giant malnourished lizards

this is also the place for you. They have a komodo dragon that was looking very out of sorts when we visited. I was sure he was going to die right in front of the kids. They had him for a very long time so I have no idea what the problem was. He appeared to be molting, which I am aware isn't generally a lizard thing. Unfortunately for this lizard that seemed to be the case. His scales were missing in large amounts. He also moved painfully slow and for the last half of our visit didn't move at all. It reminded me of the sickly Phoenix in one of the Harry Potter movies. Unfortunately their would be no ash resurrection for this poor guy.

As far as I know he still lives to this day. He was having a rough week when we visited.

Oliver escaped from our corner for a bit. Paul was taking pictures of some of his favorite Tiki's.

Marissa picked this one as her favorite. I'm not sure how one goes about picking a favorite tiki. I don't have a favorite. Couldn't decide which scowling grrrr face I like the most.

I had this delicious teriyaki chicken sandwich. Paul insisted on taking a picture of my dribbling mess. I'm just lucky he didn't catch the drooling terriyaki face I had at one point. It was worth it, it was really good.

Have you noticed that Marissa never misses a chance to take a perfect picture. She is always ready. I can't seem to get into a rhythm with it.

Here are a couple of fan favorite Tiki's and then we are off. Back to home. It's a same day trip. So a quick stop at the gas station to pick up a redbox and we headed home. We had lots of fun escaping together for the day.