Today was eventful and felt more like touristing than hiking. I first hiked through Saguaro National Park and witnessed the iconic cactus 🌵 growing everywhere. There are about 1.6 million saguaro cacti in the National Park. Then I crossed a dry open expanse and walked up to Colossal Cave and thought to myself colossal is a word we should use more. I didn’t have the extra money for the full tour, but the cave is full of tunnels and formations formed long ago from limestone deposits. Now it is a dry cave. Around the cave were coati or coatimundis, which look like monkeys (seriously google them and shown below) but behave more like raccoons or marmots, always trying to scavenge food. As for the numbers of today, it was another mid 30 miler, with about 4500 in gain. I’m feeling pretty good, but I would like to throw my sleeping bag in a drier down here before my FKT attempt. Unfortunately there isn’t much opportunity.
