It Was a Beautiful Day Here Today So Where Do We Go?

More on that in a bit.

We were sitting doing our morning computer stuff when Gordon says "Do you want to go for a drive?" A drive is about all I'm up for, still not walking long distances. He found a scenic drive up the Catalina Highway. It's a very nice paved 2 lane road that rises to about 9100 feet at the top of Mount Lemmon. This is where people in this area go to cool off in the summer, hence the town at the top of Mount Lemmon is called Summerhaven. Summerhaven is actually at 7665 feet and that's as high as we went on the mountain but we were above 8000 feet at some points.

Here we are driving through Tucson on the way to the Catalina Highway.


Lots and lots of saguaro as we start up the mountains.

This was a huge saguaro. Must have been really old.


We saw this dude several times on our way up and on our way back. It's certainly a car that you can't miss! By the way La Bruja means witch in Spanish. The owner of the car is standing at the front fender.

Here's a view of Tucson from one of the overlooks.

Now we're getting higher up the mountain so you see a little bit of snow and some hoodoos.

Then snow lining the roads. When we were getting rain a week or so ago, they were getting lots of snow in the mountains.

More snow.

We stopped at a washroom in the park and had to drive over this snow, ice and open water.

Now we see icicles!


Lots and lots of icicles!


And really big snowbanks!

Finally we get to Summerhaven which is near the top of Mount Lemmon. Here are some ski chalets there. Pricey, I would guess!







The Catalina Highway was built between 1933 and 1950 by prison workers. They did a great job and this highway has lots of pullouts and overlooks.

However, being that high up what did we find was beautiful scenery but lots and lots of snow, the very thing we came down here to get away from. Hence, the title of today's blog. Why would I give up 70F (21C) weather on the desert floor to see snow at the top of a mountain. Good question and I don't have an answer for it that makes any sense.

But I do have lots of photos!

On our way back, we stopped at Wild Oats so I could pick up a couple of items then home! We were gone for most of the day.