Lots of pics from my tucson trip are below after the jump. They could take a little while to download (~7MB), so be forewarned. I was tempted to install some gallery software with thumbnails, but screw it...

Govinda's

I arrived in Tucson on Tuesday afternoon, and after getting settled in, the first order of business was food. Conveniently, the hotel room had a local guide with a list of readers' choice restaurants, including a vegetarian category. The first one I wanted to try was Govinda's Natural Foods Buffet. It was kind of difficult to find, being discreetly located behind a commercial strip, alongside residences. Tuesday night they do an Indian buffet, which was decent, but it really paled in comparison to Sitar's buffet. Also a little pricey for what it was, but oh well. It was an interesting place, nonetheless.

It was such a beautiful evening that I decided to eat outside on their patio. Great atmosphere, except for the annoying squawking parrot in the cage at the back wall. The high walls blocked out the ambient city noise pretty well, and it was positively serene eating next to the fountain.

This "spiritual community" was a neat little oasis in the middle of Tucson. The following evening I had dinner at an all-vegan restaurant called Lovin' Spoonfuls. It was located in a strip mall environment, and wasn't really all that photo worthy. It was pretty yummy, though, but of course my sandwich would have been better with some cheese.

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Wednesday was field trip day for the conference, but I decided not to attend any of the organized trips. Instead, I went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. They call it a museum, but it's really a combination of natural history museum, zoo, and botanical garden.

The museum is located in Saguaro National Park, named after the endangered saguaro cactus spotting the landscape here. The saguaro is the iconic large cactus with arms you see in westerns. And I do mean large—on the way to the museum, I saw several saguaros that exceeded the height of two-story homes.

ASDM is located at the edge of the Tucson Mountains, and to the south lie the Santa Rita Mountains, shown here (I think).

Signs like these were all over the grounds. And trust me, I definitely kept an eye out for snakes. Luckily I didn't actually see any on the loose.

The landscaping of the museum grounds was really neat. Much of the upper portion closer to the entrace had abundant natural shade, but the desert trail lower on the hill was mostly exposed. However, there were many shelters like this located throughout.

Okay, here's the zoo portion of the ASDM...

Grey wolf.

Black bear.

Javelina (desert pig). Not a pleasant odor.

Margay. Damn cute. Apparently endangered due to their highly desirable fur.

River otters.

Bobcat.

Saw this little guy along the desert trail. He was pretty bold, as people obliviously walking right by him didn't interrupt his snack. Reminded me of an urban squirrel.

As I've mentioned before, I'm an ophidiophobe. Even seeing photographs of snakes really freaks my shit out. Taxidermied snakes do it, too (I always have to turn my head and give them a wide berth as I pass). Occasionally I try to confront this phobia, and I actually went inside this reptile exhibit. That didn't last too long. I saw a couple of snakes, my skin started crawling, and I had to get the hell out of there.

Okay time for lunch with a nice view. Unfortunately, my fish tacos were pretty bland, and the "hot" sauce was medium-mild at best. The Mountain Dew was tasty as always. I had a couple of avian visitors while I was eating, but I couldn't retrieve my camera in time to grab them.

Didn't take too many photos of the natural history portion of the museum, except to show that they're disseminators of the Great Lie.

On to the botanical garden pics...

A saguaro cactus. I'd say this one was around 20 feet tall.

Blue agave, giver of life (or at least a life worth living).

And of course, they have many other species of cacti and agave, most of whose names escape me...

Lastly, I made one final discovery...

This is where Microsoft Exchange Server goes to die! Those CDs are hanging from branches to discourage woodpeckers from doing their damage. It's ingenious, really, because I can think of few things scarier than any given MS server.

Well, that's the end of my desert museum visit. Time to mount my trusty economy-class steed and head back to town.

Tucson Mountains

Heading back to Tucson I stopped by the road a few times to grab some images of the gorgeous Tucson Mountains.

Again, I think those are the Santa Rita Mountains across the plains to the south.

Et cetera

Those are the Catalina Mountains in the background. Unfortunately, the city is so flat that I couldn't get a good photo without having to go up into some tall building. If I had had another day, I would have loved to have gone hiking up there.

A sampling of the beer I purchased at Trader Joe's. I actually bought so much that I needed to get another piece of luggage to carry them home (I wanted to get a small bag for future carry-on use anyway, so it was justified I think).

At the TYS baggage return carrousel, I waited and waited for this second piece of luggage to show up. Eventually, I saw it come down the ramp. Hmm, I thought, why is my bag in a tray? As I picked it up, I realized what had happened. Two beer bottles were casualties of rough baggage handling. What a mess. I guess I didn't package them as safely as I thought I had. At least the big lambic bottles didn't break, and I didn't have any of my clothes in that bag.

In any case, that was a nice cap to a shitty day of traveling home, which began with being chosen for extra TSA screening at Tucson. Really effective, that search.. he missed the airplane bottles I had strapped above my ankles—I apparently mistakenly thought they were verboten in these post-whatever days—but they could have been something deadly, right? Then I had the worst $8 sandwich of my life, a packed flight to ATL followed by a 3 hour layover and a sardine can-like CRJ-?00 connecting flight to TYS. Ending up with a couple of broken beer bottles seemed only appropriate.

Travel issues aside, it was a pretty cool trip, but as always I am glad to be back home...