Museum Hopping in Tucson
It’s no secret that outdoor adventures (hello, Saguaro National Park) and incredible dining opportunities abound in Tucson. But this spring, consider museum-hopping through town with the kiddos for an educational escape. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is known as a “fusion” experience as it is home to not only a natural history museum and art gallery but also a zoo, botanical garden and aquarium. Guests of all ages are invited to touch a stingray, meander through gardens showcasing the desert’s vibrant ecosystem, explore the free-flight aviary and so much more. On March 18, the museum hosts WineDown with Wildlife from 6 to 9 p.m., its third-annual wine festival to support the wildlife in its care and celebrate World Wildlife Day. Guests (must be 21-plus, so this evening will be sans kiddos) can enjoy local food and wine, live music, stargazing and much more. Get your tickets here.
Now that you’ve seen birds, it’s time to see planes at Pima Air & Space Museum. It is one of the largest non-government-funded aviation and space museums in the world and features about 400 historic aircrafts and 125,000-plus artifacts, including a moon rock, on 80 acres. One- and two-day tickets are available (yes, there’s that much to see).
Though it’s not a museum, there is plenty to be learned and observed at the 40-acre Biosphere 2 in nearby Oracle. The facility was designed to simulate an arid desert scrub ecosystem and marks the largest closed ecological system ever created. A limited number of tickets are sold each day to explore Biosphere 2 and include a self-paced app guided tour–which takes you through an ocean with a coral reef, a rainforest biome and much more–that lasts 60 to 75 minutes.