Mount Lemmon

It's been over a hundred days since Tucson has had any type of rain! Everything here is dead, brown and dusty. We needed to see some trees and something green! We decided to make the drive up Mount Lemmon for change of scenery.


Here is Tucson at the base of 2000' we passed through this awesome forest of cacti that went up the hill as far as you could see. I'm not sure how they held their position as the hill was pure granite! You can see the temp at the base was a very comfortable 69 degrees. (Thanks to Scott, www.donkeyadventure.blogspot.com, for the idea of taking a pic of the car temp!)

Its a 20 mile winding drive up the mountain. Some of the roads went right along the edge. Here is a pic of road and some of the cool rock formations as we made our way up.

We're always keeping an eye out for wildlife. On the way up we stopped at roadside park and caught this roadrunner. The pic is slightly blurry 'cause those things are darn fast!

Here is the view overlooking Tucson from around the 6000' mark.



We finally made our way to the top. It was full of Evergreen, the air smelled wonderful and it was green! The peak is actually at 9,100' but you can only drive as far as the 8,000' mark. It was a little chilly at 42 degrees, but still pretty comfortable with the intensity of the sun! It would have been nice to see a little snow on the ground, but anyway, still a great way to spend the day!

-Rich-