ANGELA B. PAN

If I had to guess Sue’s favorite part of our 2017 road trip, it would either have been Santa Fe, New Mexico or the Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Saguaro National Park but while we were there, we were in the middle of a huge heat wave. I thought Arizona was hot in previous visits to the state, but it was so HOT when we were there. Even after sunset and the sun went down, it was still so humid and hot. I even remember hearing on the radio that mailboxes were melting. That’s HOT! Holy cow. And how many times can I say hot in a row? LOL

Since it was so humid and hot, we only spent an hour or so around sunset in the national park. The rest of the time was spent in our hotel’s outdoor pool. We wanted to go when the sun was lower and maybe a little bit cooler, but that didn’t make much difference but you better believe there was lots of ice cream afterwards. Out of all the places on our roadtrip, I hope to visit Tucson again sometime soon because I actually enjoyed the time while we were there. It seemed like a super cute city with so much to do and see. We just didn’t get enough time. I just remember waking up the next morning and wanting to get out of the heat wave as soon as possible. The next stop on our trip was Los Angeles and that was nowhere close to being as hot. So we made our way over and spent the rest of our time in California before flying back home.

My camera settings for this image is F3.5 at 1/320th sec at ISO 400 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

We didn’t get to spend enough time in Tucson, Arizona. Mainly because it was so freakin’ hot! We drove through a serious heat wave where it was 90 degrees at 8a in the morning. By noon it was up in the 110 to 115 range. It was just so uncomfortable to be outside. Like if you’ve ever gone to Bikram Yoga you know what it’s like in the room. It was hot, humid and you kinda feel like you are having trouble breathing. Well it was like that in Tucson but outdoors. There was no way to get any kind relief except to stand next to the air conditioning. I think the majority of our visit was spent hanging out in the hotel pool to cool off. When we woke up the morning, we packed our bags and left as soon as we could. No offense, Arizona.

But the little bit of it that we did get to see, I really enjoyed. My fav was seeing all the saguaro cacti. I’ve never seen so many in one place. And they were huge! I wish I could have taken one home with me. And the part that I was most surprised about was how many airplanes there were. Granted, our hotel was near the airport but even driving around other parts of the city, it felt like it was a grave yard of airplanes. As if all the airplanes in the world just laid to rest and picked Tucson to hangout in.

The ice cream ain’t bad though 😉

I’d definietly would want to go back again. I didn’t get to see or experience nearly as much as I wanted to but next time I visit Arizona, I’m thinking it will be in the winter time 🙂 Maybe at that time they’ll have some descent weather.

Man o Man was Arizona hot! That’s what you get when you drive through a heat wave. I think the hottest we experienced was 115 degrees fahrenheit. Luckily, we were just in Tucson. I heard the heat was so hot that it was melting mailboxes in Phoenix! That’s pretty crazy if you ask me. We pretty much arrived in Tucson, went straight for the hotel pool, got out just in time for dinner in air conditioning and sunset in Saguaro National Park. The next morning we woke up and left Arizona, ASAP.

I didn’t expect too much from the park. I like to keep my expectations low so I don’t disappoint myself but it was way better than I had imagined! These Saguaro cactuses were huge. Way taller than me. So much fun to drive through and point at. If you’re planning on visiting anytime soon, I suggest starting out on the east end of the park where they have a paved road to drive through an 8 mile loop. There are a lot of pull over points where you can just stop and enjoy the views.

From a photographer’s standpoint I had a blast in this park but found it a little difficult to shoot. First of all, there are SO MANY saguaros. To single anyone of them out was difficult. Especially since there are so many cactuses around. They all sort of blended in with their surroundings if you wanted to shoot wide angle. So the way that I did it was to use a foreground element to sort of frame a really cool looking saguaro. I think if I had more time there, I’d also try to use the evening or early morning light to try to highlight the outline of the cactuses. I think that’d be pretty cool. Oh well, next time. Hopefully it won’t be as hot that time.