Friday our family went on a night walk in the desert. Saguaro National Park offers it with your admission fee, but since we bought an annual pass, it was at no additional cost to us. It's also so popular that we had to sign up for it a month ago.
Seventeen of us met at the visitor's center at 7 pm. They gave us red plastic film to put over our flashlight lenses, then the wonderful Wanda told us why--some of the animals don't notice the light if it's red, plus as our eyes adjust to the dark, keeping the light low helps keep our irises open.
We all drove up the mountain about two miles, then got out and gathered. I found out there was a lot of gathering on the walk. Wanda used demonstrations to explain how our eyes see in the dark, then we set off. We stopped to hear owls and coyotes, stopped to act like baby bats and match the scent in our pill bottle with a mother bat with the same scent in her pill bottle, played a bat/moth version of Marco Polo, used a black light to look for scorpions (no thank you, see my post from early July last year), paid attention to the cool damp as we walked in the dry river wash, and touched unseen objects.
The girls were the stars of the evening. It was a great evening family activity.
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