Yesterday morning we woke up at 8 to a hot Tucson day. Our hotel had an AMAZING free breakfast with all kinds of eggs and meats and yogurts. It was a wonderful change from the pastries and horrible coffee of our previous hotel.

After our fill or delicious food, we headed to Saguaro National Park. I’ve wanted to see a wild Saguaro my entire life! Apparently they only grow here in the Sonoran Desert. And they are EVERYWHERE.

We drove through the “cactus forest “.

It was SOOOOO awesome. We even hiked about a mile. By the way, fun facts about Saguaros from Jiyeon. They’re often over 20 feet tall; and they live around 150-200 years; they dot put out arms until about age 50 at least.

So awesome.

Afterwards, Jiyeon found a Thai restaurant for lunch because the Asian stomachs we’re having some pretty serious rice withdrawals thus far.

It was delicious. And the Asians were so happy 😉

The owner was this fun guy from Bangkok. I enjoyed talking to him!

So after lunch, we headed into the middle of nowhere (once again) to visit the Biosphere2. Let me explain.

It’s this HUGE structure that was initially completely air locked. Inside they have a self sustaining environment… It has 5 biomes – ocean, desert, marsh, grassland, tropical rainforest. In the early 90s, 8 scientists lived completely locked inside for 2 years to study whether it would be possible to live in such an enclosed environment in a place with a hostile outside environment such as Mars.

The experiment ‘failed’ for that purpose, but the scientists dont consider it a failure… They actually learned a lot about the exact kinds of problems humans would face in such a situation.

On another note, they learned a lot about earth’s environment in general.

Nowadays, it’s not a completely air-locked facility, but it’s now part of the University of Arizona and used for research. Right now it’s being used for some studies of the effects of drought on different environments and some studies on the way water and soil interact on hill slopes. There have also been a lot of experiments regarding the effects of Increasing CO2 levels.

It was actually really interesting. Fascinating, really.

But the second part of the tour focused more on the mechanics of HOW the building functioned rather than WHAT its function was, and I was feeling quite bored by the end of that speech.

We went into the basement and saw all the gadgets and such that make different things work, but my brain stopped listening at that point.

The building itself also has a lot of important engineering features, and there was one that was actually really interesting, but it’s too hard to try to explain in words.

I think, overall, I was just most impressed that people lived locked inside for 2 years.

After that, our car of exhausted people set out for Sedona.

Jiyeon taught us what she had learned in her research along the way.

We played “I have never” and “Have you ever?” and “20 questions”. But then people started arguing about technicalities so I had to ban 20 questions. At least for yesterday.

And of course, we enjoyed the beautiful views while driving.

Finally we arrived in Sedona around 9pm. And we had dinner at a wonderful organic pizza place. We were so hungry no one even took a picture of the pizza!

But the best part was checking into our hotel.

It is AWESOME.

Yes, there’s a fireplace AND a balcony. Here’s a few pics of our view:

I watched the sunrise this morning at 5am and it was so pretty I couldn’t even get close to a good photo. And the stars last night were INCREDIBLE. Ive literally never seen so many stars. I could even clearly see the Milky Way (I think). Amazing.