The talk on Christmas Day was of what to do? The cold front had passed in a series of prolonged heavy showers on Christmas Eve and at first Cousin David demurred from the idea of satisfying my curiosity about what lay at the end of the road that we could see winding up the hill above the house. On hearing our determination to drive up in the van he caved and decided to drive us and see for ourselves no matter how cold it might be.
It wasn’t that cold, which is to say we wore our puffy jackets above five thousand feet and the windchill made me feel like a small child coming in from playing in the snow but these days it wasn’t cold enough to put me off. We even saw a few snow patches near the end of the road around 8,000 feet. And yet they were bicycling.
Cousin David thought the idea of us driving our van up Mount Lemmon might be too much. The road is wide and smooth and full of pull outs which most slow pokes I noticed declined to use. This is not a road to drive during busy times with any expectation of enjoying the road itself. I thoroughly enjoyed being a passenger.
In discussing driving up the mountain I speculated out loud the spelling probably indicated a person rather than a fruit. I expected amount Lemmon was named for some man prominent in the history of the area.
The short version is Sara Plummer grew up in Maine and moved to New York to teach gym and art to young ladies and where she had pneumonia so at age 33 went West to Santa Barbara in 1869. She opened a bookstore met botanist John Lemmon and fell in love.
I read her story on an Arizona Highways website and I must say it’s worth a read. She and her husband traveled the west during the height of the Apache wars collecting specimens and painting. They were an extraordinary couple ending their marriage in their Berkeley home when he died and she subsequently lost the will to live. The mountain was named in her honor as the first white woman to climb it. That phrase has an old fashioned ring but I guess she worked and earned the honor.
In 2021 you see a man in a top hat and he looks dressed up in fancy dress. All I could think was what an odd place to spot an Abraham Lincoln impersonator.
David wanted to hike a trail so we stopped and looked for one. I found the altitude slightly debilitating and the cold air didn’t help, what there was of it at 7500 feet.
We found areas that had been burned by a wildfire.
The distant horizon was a mixture of blue shadowed ridges, puffs of wispy clouds and glimpses of the valley floor.
The village at the end of the road, 8,000 feet up looked shuttered for Christmas and deserted not surprisingly. One restaurant was open the other wasn’t nor was the convenience store.
It looked like what is was, a shabby collection of uninhabited buildings between seasons. It none of the flair of a dedicated ski resort as the season must surely be short but as a summer destination it looked like a construction site preparing for better years ahead.
I’d like to come back in summer.
This place must be a lively and welcome respite from summer heat.
It was dark and damp on a sunless winter day.
There is a windy point lookout with views across the city. Rusty took one look at the noisy yelling crowds taking selfies and turned to a quieter unused trail round the back. Good boy.
An 800mm lens on a bridge camera, my FZ1000 gets you close.
My boy finding his own trail. Dogs on leashes can go all over the mountain and we saw quite a few.
We met the cyclist below at a pull out, Zach from Houston, struggling to climb the mountain stopping every twenty Mounties to climb and stopping every so often to descend frozen by the wind chill on a forty degree day thousands of feet up. Gnarly.
Below 5,000 feet the grasses grew thicker and the air felt warmer, but around 4,000 feet the Saguaro reappeared as if by magic.
David rode the brakes down muttering about the grade. I suggested using the manual gear box for engine braking to skate the brakes but he ignored me muttering about the strain on the engine.
Which to me is weird inasmuch as the same driver will happily ride the freeway at eighty with a loaded car and no thought of the engine straining Boiling your brake fluid would be a wake call though. I enjoyed my day off from decision making.
And so back to Earth and Cioppino for dinner.
1 comment:
Did Mt. Lemmon on a trip years ago. Once was enough...you are right that there are other neat vistas without battling the traffic and people.
Do David and Mary Jane stay there through the summer? Too hot for me.
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