Day 3 - Museums - Everest

    Our first full day in Tucson started with a simple breakfast at the hotel. The plan was to go to the Sonoran Desert Museum first and then the Arizona State Museum because the desert museum was outdoors and the other one was indoors. It was supposed to rain and be super windy later in the afternoon so we figured it would be smart to do it in that order. It was a relatively long and windy drive to the Sonoran Desert Museum, but it was worth it. 

    The Sonoran Desert Museum is like a zoo, but with more realistic enclosures and with more native animals. We were all pretty cold when we got there, but as we walked along the paths, we warmed up and saw some cool animals like javelinas, a fox, coyotes, snakes, frogs, insects, and some raptors. We actually got to the zoo/museum just in time to watch a raptor show where they released a raven, a great horned owl, and 4 Harris Hawks. It was really cool to see them fly around and just to see them so close up. After that, we walked through other parts of the museum including a cactus garden with a lot of different types of cactus which was interesting; there were some fuzzy ones that I wanted to touch. Once we walked through everything and went into both gift shops, someone told us that there was a live animal show in a few minutes so we stayed a bit longer to go to that. It was in an indoor auditorium and they brought out a barn owl, a thick-billed parrot, and a skunk! They talked about each of the animals and we asked some questions about them. I didn't know that skunks could control their spray very well, but they can actually change it to be a mist (so it covers more area) or a stream (so it can get one thing really well), once we were done with that, we were getting hungry so we started our drive back in town and went to Nico's. 

    I know I can talk for most people when I say that it was really good. I got the carne asada fries which are basically fries with carne asada, pico de gallo, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole. I think I would rate it 9.5/10 and I wish it existed back in Houston. 

    Once we were done with that we had to hurry over to the University of Arizona to go to the Arizona State Museum before they closed at 4 pm (for some reason all of the museums in Tucson close at 4 pm every day). The museum contained a lot of native American art and culture, from pottery to jewelry to weaving, seeing the technological advancement and the generational artistic techniques of a civilization that existed 1000 years ago was very intriguing and it was also nice to get out of the cold for a bit. 

    Then we headed back to the hotel and chilled out for a bit until 6:30 when we headed off to Rocco's Little Chicago for pizza. We sat outside again and it was a little bit chilly but once we got our hot sticks we were fine. Hot sticks are doughy bread sticks with buffalo sauce in them and served with a ranch dip, I ate so many of them that by the time their famous deep-dish pizza came out, I could only eat two slices. To be fair, each of those slices was very very heavy, but it was super good, I wish I could've eaten more. I think everyone else enjoyed the meal as well and we had a good time talking I would rate it 8.5-9/10 for the food. That concluded our 2nd day in Tucson!