Thursday- Day 3

 

 To start the day we went to the Saguaro National Park Visitor Center. There we watched a short clip about the desert and after we went outside and learned about the different plant life. The man that was lecturing us, Tom Greene, had a daughter who went to LA about 20 years earlier. Small world! We hiked on a trail that contained rocks with very old drawings. Native Americans drew these many years ago. After lunch, we then headed off to the Sonoran Desert Museum and split into groups. Each group visited a different section of wildlife and a part of the park. It was almost like a small zoo that was centrally focused on desert life. We were short on time so we went straight to the National Weather Service Tucson Office at Arizona University. There we learned about weather balloons as well as different parts of the weather services they provided nationwide. After a great a presention done by Ken Drozd, we were able to watch a real weather balloon launch (by Ricardo Humphreys)! It was very impressive but a much shorter process than expected. After all this fun we walked around the university campus (it was very pretty and green) we ate dinner at Chipotles. We had ice cream for dessert and walked back to the National Weather Service to watch a presentation at the monthly meeting of the local American Meteorological Society chapter done by Mr. Mogil (with lots of help and organization from Ms. Levine). Many of us were also able to participate in it as well. This presentation ended  the day and we went back to the house with sun tans (many burnt) and a wealth of knowledge.

-Jaly, Jeff