Road trip to Mount Lemmon!

To get out of the heat in Tucson, we decided to take a trip to Mount Lemmon.

It's one of the highest points in Tucson.

It's also the place where they had a Japanese internment camp from WWII, which was our first stop.

You can read more about it 'here'.

It's a sad but interesting historic place.

All that's left of the buildings are stone walls and foundations.

This was the main building at one point:

We think this was probably a root cellar:

I wasn't about to go all the way in there to find out though ;)

Aside from the building remains, there were all sorts of beautiful flowers around us...

Mexican Bird of Paradise.

Arizona Rosewood

Unknown wildflower.

We decided to keep walking...

...

Up above were more foundations for the camp.

This time it was the shower area:

There were even some shower tiles left embedded in the cement.

After that we headed back down the dry stream bed...

and got back in the car to go further up the mountain.

We stopped to see the view...

stopped at a stream in a little town called Summerhaven...

and took the trail the rest of the way to the top in the car and then on foot.

This view was our reward:

Mount Lemmon is named after a botanist named Sara Plummer Lemmon who trekked to the top in 1881.

You can read more about it 'here'.

On the way back down we stopped again for another amazing view:

There's a lot of history on that mountain and so much beauty.

Mostly though, it was a whole lot cooler! ;)

xo

rue