Agave has been cultivated in the Tucson area for hundreds of years.
While tequila might be the most widely known product made from agave (a.k.a. the century plant or maguey), it’s certainly not the only one! Different species of the plant are distilled into different spirits, collectively called mezcal.
Native peoples would also use agave to make food, medicine, and even rope. They developed farming techniques to maximize the plant’s adaptability and drought-resistant qualities, so they could grow it where other crops wouldn’t thrive.
Mural of Mayahuel, the agave goddess, by Rock ‘‘CYFI’’ Martinez.
Smithsonian magazine has an annual tradition of celebrating Museum Day, and many museums across the U.S. join in by offering free admission that day.
Visitor center for Smithsonian museums in D.C.
I had planned to tell you – before Museum Day – about a few participating museums I’ve visited in the past. But life is weird right now and I’ve pretty much lost all sense of time, so September 18 came and went before I realized I hadn’t posted this yet. I’m still going to tell you about those museums, though. There’s one in Indiana, one in Washington, and five in Arizona. While I posted a similar list ahead of Museum Day a couple years ago, a lot of those museums weren’t participating this year. So, on to the new list!
2 Museums I’ve Visited While Traveling
Mike Pace, interpreter and specialist on Lenape life and culture. Photo via Conner Prairie.
This is a living history museum that I loved visiting as a kid! I remember candle-dipping demonstrations and sitting in on a lesson in an old-timey one-room schoolhouse. They’ve added a lot of things since the last time I was there (many years ago), like make-and-take craft activities, a balloon ride, and the Lenape Indian Camp, which explores what life was like for members of the Lenape (a.k.a. Delaware) tribe in 1816 Indiana.
Regular admission $20/adults, $15/youth (ages 2-12). $2 off when you purchase tickets online.
Closed Mondays.
Storytelling series: Thursday – Sunday evenings, September 16 – October 2. Hear about Indiana’s early history from expert storytellers, including former assistant chief of the Lenape tribe Mike Pace, who helped create the Lenape Indian Camp experience. Separate admission required for the event series: $10/adult, $6/youth.
Prairie Pursuits: various dates. Workshops on traditional skills for teens and adults. Upcoming class topics include blacksmithing, woodworking, cooking, and pottery.
Detail of “If VI Was IX: Roots and Branches” guitar sculpture, Museum of Pop Culture, Seattle.
The museum formerly known as the Experience Music Project (EMP) has an atrium devoted to constantly-playing music videos (“Sky Church”), a towering guitar sculpture (“If VI Was IX: Roots and Branches”), and galleries for Seattle legends like Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana, as well as exhibitions on sci-fi, video games, and fantasy genre archetypes. Housed within a striking building designed by Frank O. Gehry, MoPOP is located at Seattle Center, near the Space Needle.
Admission prices vary, depending on factors like when you’re going and how far in advance you purchase tickets.
An eclectic history of life in Arizona. On display are objects as varied as vintage vehicles, rock and mineral samples, maps, and re-creations of notable Arizonans’ homes and offices. There’s a new temporary exhibition (“Still Marching: From Suffrage to #MeToo”) on how Arizona women have worked to drive social change over the past century.
The permanent collection is grouped into themed rooms, like…
The People: Not only will you learn about the diverse groups that populated the Old West, but you can also read testimonies of people who saw the Phoenix Lights in 1997 and either did or didn’t believe they were UFOs.
WWII: Takes you inside a military barracks, Japanese internment camp, and a POW camp. Dark corners that should not be forgotten.
Desert Cities: Probably the most nostalgia-inducing area for those of us who grew up in Arizona, It focuses on the cultural changes in the Phoenix metro area during its post-WWII boom and includes an exhibit on local children’s t.v. show Wallace and Lladmo and an iconic statue from Bob’s Big Boy restaurant chain.
30,000 square feet of exhibition space devoted to the history of combat aircraft, plus a working maintenance hangar and active aircraft ramp. Located at Falcon Field Airport in Mesa, this is my pick for enthusiasts of old military planes and memorabilia. In other words, if you’re my grandpa, this is the museum for you!
The Mesa Historical Museum is housed in what was originally a school, built in 1913 in the very oldest part of the City of Mesa as we now know it. There is a replica of the one-room adobe schoolhouse that came before it, antique farm equipment and other artifacts from the area, and a couple rotating exhibits.
SMoCA is an art and event space with a permanent collection and exhibitions in the areas of contemporary art, architecture, and design. It’s part of Scottsdale Civic Center, along with Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, City Hall, Civic Center Library, and a bunch of restaurants and bars centered around a 21-acre park.
Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, and major holidays.
Regular admission is $10/adults, free for anyone 18 and younger.
Pay-What-You-Wish admission on Thursdays and the second Saturday of each month.
Timed-entry reservations are now required for all admissions – even free tickets.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of Kelly green, a bit lighter than emerald, you’ll find Clover. It’s the color of lots of leafy growing things and glass bottles, and it brings an eye-catching vibrancy anywhere you add it.
A few places and projects that look great in this green…
1. Jungle Garden at the Huntington Library in Southern California. / from our 2016 Pasadena trip
2. Tips for building an A-frame Cabin on UO Journal. / Photo: Carey Quinton Haider
Tohono Chul is a nature preserve just north of Tucson. On its 49 acres, you can find art, shops, gardens, a bistro, and lots of paths winding through the desert.
A Desert Corner
The name comes from the words for “desert corner” in the language of the Tohono O’odham (“desert people”), who were the ancestral inhabitants of this region.
I’d heard about this beautiful place from my Master Gardener uncle long before we moved to Tucson. For awhile I thought it was called “Tohono Jewel.” It is a gem of a place, so that fits too.
Phillip and I finally made it in there when my parents and their friends who were visiting from the Midwest decided to spend a day in Tucson.
They drove down from Phoenix and met us at the entrance on a sunny morning in February 2020 – when we were all blissfully unaware what the next 12 months would bring.
Routes to Drive from Phoenix to Tucson
Tohono Chul is actually in a pretty convenient location for people making the trip south from Phoenix.
There are two main ways to get from the Phoenix area to Tucson:
1. I-10 Freeway (“the 10”)
1.5-hour approximate drive time.
Quickest, most direct route.
Tohono Chul is about 15 minutes east of the 10 (exit at Ina Rd.)
2. Highways / Scenic Route (“the back way”)
2.5-hour approximate drive time.
Slower, more interesting route through Florence to State Route 79 then to Copper Corridor Scenic Road (SR 77).
Tohono Chul is just west of SR 77, so this route practically drops you at its front door.
“Regal Horned Lizard” by Dave Stone.
Art in Nature
Even though the sun was out, it was pleasantly chilly when we arrived. Many of the less cold-tolerant plants in the gardens were covered up because of a freeze warning, draped in sheets like furniture in an unused room of a Victorian mansion.
Part of “Two Cactus Wrens” sculpture by Mark Rossi.
Of course, plenty of the cactus varieties there are unfazed by frost. For example, no one needs to cover 30-foot-tall saguaros. Which is good. They take care of themselves and tend to outlive us humans.
Which brings me to my favorite plant we saw that day: a friendly-looking crested saguaro! Crested saguaros have a rare mutation that causes them to fan out at top.
“Standing Life-size Vulture” sculpture by Kioko Mwitiki.
While we didn’t go into any of the galleries, we did see several outdoor animal sculptures woven throughout the gardens, like a life-sized rusted metal vulture (by Kioko Mwitiki) and a much-larger-than-life horned lizard (by Dave Stone).
During the summer, it would be great to spend the morning exploring outdoor trails and then retreat into the galleries during the heat of the day.
There’s an outdoor geology wall that uses rocks from the nearby Santa Catalinas to illustrate the layers of stone under the mountains.
The Desert Living Courtyard showcases several types of gardens you could DIY with plants that grow well here, including a moorish garden and a “barrio garden” that replicates a backyard garden space with art from upcycled materials. For each garden vignette, there’s a list of plants and materials you could use to recreate it.
More Tucson Gems
After Tohono Chul, we ate lunch at the nearly 100-year-old restaurant El Charro. While there is a much closer location in Oro Valley, we opted to go to the original old building in Downtown.
It was the time of year where the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show® happens at the Tucson Convention Center. If you don’t have time for the massive, main show, you can get kind of a sampling at dozens of smaller gem shows that spring up around it.
I knew that we’d be in walking distance of Hotel Tucson City Center, which had its own free, open-to-the public show with 300 vendors selling minerals and fossils on their property.
Before our guests returned to Phoenix, we took a drive around Downtown, stopping for ice cream at HUB.
Everything Changes
I’m extra grateful we happened to go on that day a year ago, just before a certain coronavirus would shut everything down, when 2020’s dumpster fire was only a spark.
After being closed for months, Tohono Chul has reopened 7 days a week with pandemic precautions in place (details below).
Many Downtown Tucson restaurants are open for takeout. El Charro is celebrating its 99th anniversary with a special menu. HUB Ice Cream Parlor has remodeled and now has a walk-up window.
On a more personal note, my parents’ Midwestern friends were getting ready to launch their annual winter visit, when my dad received a cancer diagnosis and found out he would need major surgery right away.
It has all given him – and us – a new perspective.
After coming through his surgery successfully, he made himself a rule to focus on the moment we have now. It’s a good thing to practice.
Treasure your corner of the desert.
– More Tohono Chul info –
Not to be confused with Tucson Botanical Gardens (which is a collection of urban gardens in the middle of town).
We were already on the road to Colossal Cave Mountain Park, when we realized we’d overshot our original destination. We had heard about the cave but hadn’t ever been there. So, instead of doubling back and trying to find the entrance for the nature preserve we had probably just driven through but weren’t sure how to access, we kept going!
We weren’t even sure if we’d be able to get into the park or if it was still closed due to the coronavirus. And we certainly weren’t planning on going into any caves since Quijote was with us. But it was Phillip’s birthday, and he voted to go see what we could find.
Colossal Cave Mountain Park
Colossal Cave is a dry cave system under the Rincon Mountains in the Tucson-adjacent community of Vail. Before being developed into a tourist attraction by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s, the cave had served a variety of functions, including a shelter for the Hohokam people, train robber hideout, and guano mine.
What to know if you decide to visit:
The park around the cave is open for hiking, camping, and taking in the views. (Free entrance. You just pay fees if you’re going on a cave tour or camping.)
Cave tours have restarted on a limited basis – currently only the Classic Cave Tour is available.
You can choose your tour time and book tickets online. (Adult $18 / child $9 / military or first responder $14) You can only enter the cave on a tour.
Face coverings and social distancing (six feet apart) are required during tours.
Under the roof of this cool rock structure built by the CCC is the cave entrance, Terrace Cafe, and gift shop.
Because the CCC were so instrumental in developing Colossal Cave Mountain Park, there’s a statue in honor of the CCC workers at the entrance to the terrace.
There are also nice hiking trails outside the cave – I’m sure they’ll be even nicer when it’s not summery hot.
Coatimundis
We were looking around the terrace when I overheard one of the staff tell the group waiting for their tour time that they often see coatimundis going in and out of the cave.
That stopped me in my tracks.
A coatimundi (or “coati”) is a long-nosed member of the raccoon family that mostly lives in Central America, but has also found its way into higher elevations of the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico (Mt. Lemmon, for example).
Phillip and I have been on the lookout for one ever since we went to Chiricahua for the first time and didn’t see any there.
We had no idea there’d be a chance to see one that day. Apparently, though, they’re a common sight, going in and out of the cave and hunting around the park for trash (which, of course, is on-brand for the raccoon family).
Moments later, we saw a young coati atop the hill above the cave entrance! He started sniffing along the edge, and then scampered down its sheer face and into the cave.
Phillip barely had time to snap photos, and I had my hands full with Quijote.
But we saw it.
It was like nature gave Phillip a colossal birthday surprise!
The permanent collection is grouped into themed rooms, like…
