Benjie Sanders / Arizona Daily Star 2007

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Internet travel site gives Tucson's desert museum high marks

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The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum beat out the famed San Diego and St. Louis zoos in a travel- recommendation Web site's ratings of U.S. zoos and wild-animal attractions.

The Tucson attraction finished second to the Memphis Zoo in the new rating from Trip Advisor — www.trip advisor.com — based on user comments and the picks of the Web site's editors.

"This is really a wonderful honor considering how many great zoos there are out there," said Tim Vimmerstedt, the museum's marketing and community relations director. "We've always been highly, highly ranked by travel organizations, and they've been able to send a lot of people our way."

An example of user comments on the Web: A blogger called Volvo99 from San Diego wrote that the Desert Museum "commands an incredible desert valley vista . . . and allows one to walk among the stately and elegant cacti just as Nature has left it. Must do's include the twice-daily raptor demonstration, where hawks and owls swoop over the crowd."

Despite high gas prices and the sour economy, Vimmerstedt said the summer hasn't been unusually slow. Europeans' visits are roughly on par with 2006, he said.