Mount Lemmon

Charlotte and I recently spent a week in Arizona visiting my parents and spending a few days exploring the Tucson area. While this blog is meant for projects I am working on I wanted to include our drive up Mt Lemmon since it was really neat. My Dad loaned us his Mazda MX-5 with a 6-speed manual and a retractable hardtop. It was the perfect car for the drive.

You basically drive to the edge of Tucson along a road that doesn’t really look different than any others until suddenly you start climbing rather quickly. At first you are surrounded by saguaro’s but within a few miles they disappear and you are driving through brush. As you continue to climb the brush gives way to pine and fur trees. By the time we got to the pine trees we had to put the top up and turn on the heat!

This was about as far up as we could make it before we ran out of (public) roads. There was a fire about 20 years ago which makes for even more interesting pictures. While the vast change of scenery and climate is amazing, the real magic is the drive itself. This was one of the coolest drives I’ve ever gone on and it was in a car with under 200hp!