First Full Day in Arizona

Today marked our first full day in Arizona.  We landed in Phoenix late last night and, after collecting our bags and finding our rental vans, spent a couple of hours driving to Tucson.  By the time we arrived at our house (2:30am local time, 4:30am Massachusetts time). everyone was wiped out and a little slaphappy.  This morning had a slow start.  After an introduction to weather and geography, we went into Tucson to the Vaisala offices to see Ron Holle, a lightnening expert.  Vaisala is a Finnish company which makes weather instrumentation.  The Tucson office is the headquarters of their lightning detection network.  We learned how sensors can remotely locate a lightning strike, how lightning forms, and that the only safe places in the event of lightning are inside a recently occupied building and inside a car with a solid metal roof.

One of the big exciting things we saw coming out of the airport last night was a cactus along the side of the road.  Margaret and Lisa were so excited that they hugged the cactus next to the parking lot when we made a pit stop.  (Don't worry, they were careful.)  Here's Tim making friends with one of the cacti right outside our house during our walk this afternoon.  We found lots of species of desert plants, including saguaro cacti, prickly pears, cholla, barrel cacti (in blume right now!), and palo verde trees.  We also found sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks.  Mike Mogil, our resident meteorologist and guide extraordinaire found one with fossilized shell imprints.

picture by Alaina

As we cooked dinner and wound down from the day, the clouds and virga (rain that evaporates before reaching the ground) lifted enough to deliver a spectacular sunset.

picture by Ms. Ruby

We'll keep you all updated as we venture all throughout the state of Arizona.  Tomorrow we're headed for the Biosphere.