1/29/18 Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Well, we had a bit of a disappointing day today.  When we started this whole process of volunteering with the desert museum, we started in May of last year and dealt with a woman named Allison, who seemed very excited to have us volunteer.  She said to contact her a month before we were to arrive, but when we did, it was another young lady who answered our email.  Apparently, Allison had left and Lauren was taking her place.  She also seemed excited when we re-explained what our plan was, but it must have been inexperience talking.  When we went to see her today, she said that everyone she talked to was not interested in having a volunteer for just a month as "it would take too long to train us".  I also think that because part of the museum is a zoo with desert animals, there are federal laws in place.  She did, however, let us in for free and gave us a voucher for a $5 lunch at the restaurant.  She said that there may be some volunteering available at the education center.  We went off and had a great tour of the museum (walked about 2 1/2 miles), stopped for lunch, and headed to the education center.  It appears that they could use someone for clerical work a couple of days per week, but since Dave doesn't do clerical, we politely declined.  We have some other ideas in the works and will look into one or two of them tomorrow so I will let you know what happens.

I have to say that the museum has changed greatly since 1985 when we stopped here with our kids.  As I remember, there was a walk through a cactus field with labels for the different types.  They may also have had a reptile room.  Now the place is huge!  The pictures today are all from the museum walk.  There is a chuckwalla (a foot long lizard), a Mexican tarantula (a the little bigger than the size of the palm of my hand), a grizzly bear cactus, long-eared bats hanging from the ceiling of a cave, a display of minerals found in Arizona, a coyote, some lovely purple flowers, an organ pipe cactus, a tiny hummingbird nest (about 2 inches in diameter), and a hummingbird trying to blend in with the branches of a small tree.