We got home late last night and drove today to Flagstaff.   We drove out to rincon Mountain on the east side of of Tucson in the morning to visit Saguaro Park on this side.  It is busier because it is closer, and the saguaro cactus are bigger and older.  We drove on the cactus forest road which is paved and took this picture to show how tall some of these are.

In the afternoon we drove up to Mount Lemmon to Sky Center for a nightly observation tour.  We were in a dome with a 36 inch scope.  It had an eyepiece for us to look at various objects.  There was a smaller reflecting scope also to look through.  Astonomers do not use these as as rule because they download what they are looking at in a digital format and then analyze it later on a computer.  There was a dome across from where we were that is operated by Koreans only they are never there.  They can get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee and do it remotely from Korea.  Tucson is the astronomical capital of the world and we learned of many more public programs like this one.  We went outside to focus our binoculars and used Kitt Peak which is 56 miles outside of tucson and we had driven 27 miles up Mount Lemmon to the top.  There is a ski area up there that still had snowon the runs.  We were at   9157 feet and with the wind it got rather cold.  Still worth it to see planets, nebulas, a super nova, and so many other things.   We could have spent the whole week visiting all the observatories, etc around Tucson.  Maybe we will come back some time and just stay for a week.

 If there had been no clouds, we would have seen a green top on the sun as it was setting.  Still so pretty.  I drove us home down the mountain and we got to bed around midnight. 

 We took a scenic route outside of Phoenix to Payson and stopped at Montezuma Castle Indian Ruins on the way to Sedona.

 These are some of the ruins that early settlers and soldiers called Montezuma because they thought the Aztec had built them.  The Indians who settled and farmed here were the Sinagua who came here around 1125.

We continued our drive to Flagstaff by way of Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon.  It was so pretty driving up from the south to Sedona.  I was disappointed in Oak Creek.  Sedona itself was "so touristy", and the canyon was full of RV parks, souvenier shops and "cabins" on the creek.  We are driving to Verde Canyon tomorrow for our 4 hour train ride.  It should be very relaxing and scenic.