"he must have thought I was crazy" Top 5 Page for this destination Saguaro National Park Favorite Tip by richiecdisc

Favorite thing: The Saguaros. Some things are over hyped but these big cacti more than live up to their reputation and are a sight to behold.

Fondest memory: I'm sure he thought I was crazy. I'd nearly torn my entire car apart. There was stuff scattered all over our camping spot. It was hard to believe all of it had come out of one car. But still no sign of my keys. I finally resigned myself to admitting that I must have left them at Chiricahua National Monument, some 135 miles away, every inch of it in the wrong direction. We'd make a call to the Visitor Center just to make sure but we'd have to make a decision about going back to get them one way or another.

We had made our way to Saguaro National Park the evening before and thanks to the time change had made it to the Visitor Center just before it closed even though by my watch said we were too late. The rangers told us that while there was technically no campground in the park there was one very nearby called Gilbert Ray. They explained how to get to it and that it was self-pay and unmanned outside of the brief January through March “season.” We made our way over and found many spots though very few offering any shade, something becoming increasingly important in the desert as it got later in the spring. We finally decided on one under a good sized tree but unfortunately we were on the wrong side of it and our new neighbor was the lucky recipient of most of the relief it was providing. (continued below in Fondest Memory)