Adventures in Arizona: We Got to See Snow Too

First off, I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day this week. I know Bentley did. You can tell by the way she was enjoying her present - this conversation heart dog cookie.

Hope everyone had a Happy Valentine's Day!

So our house is in an HOA neighborhood, something we never thought we'd choose to live in, and before we can do any landscaping, we have to get it all approved by the board. Well, our backyard is a blank slate right now and Tres helped us with a plan for the yard over Christmas. Ever since we got here, we've been looking at Tres' plan, the approved plant list, and the plants that seem readily available at Lowes, Home Depot and the local nurseries to make some modification. The board meets once a month and we realized the meeting was Monday night so we finished up our plans Sunday night and Mark walked them up to the Community Center and put them in the mailbox. We figured, we might have thrown it together but the worst they could say was no and we could try again next month. Worst yet, our printer wasn't printing very well and it was a very faded plan so they probably couldn't read much. Here is what we submitted.

Turns out, it's a good thing we submitted it because IT GOT APPROVED! Now we just have a lot of yard work to do before it gets too hot out :)

As I said last week, we planned to take the 4Runner back down to Tucson this weekend to drop it off to get painted and decided to check out Mount Lemmon (not Lemon Mountain as I originally said). First stop on the way up the mountain was at the pay station to pay $5 for a parking pass to use the hiking trails. One of the signs said that we were about to drive what would equate to be all the vegetation between Mexico and Canada (or something like that). The top of the mountain is a little over 9,000 feet. On the way up, we passed lots of trail heads but decided to keep driving towards the top and Summerhaven, the little town at the top right before Mount Lemmon Ski Valley. We did stop at one overlook when we had a good view of a mountain with snow on it so Mark could look around too since he was driving.

TONS of cactus as we first started driving up the mountain

If you can enlarge this, look at all the cactus up on those hills!

First view of SNOW!

Crazy rocks

Bentley looking down at all the cars passing below us.

Up, up, up we drove. The higher we got, the more snow we saw. People were pulled off the road left and right playing in the snow, sledding, and even building snowmen. We missed the turnoff for Ski Valley and headed into Summerhaven. I had done some reading about Mount Lemmon before we went and turns out there was a devastating fire in June 2003 that basically destroyed Summerhaven. They are still doing reconstruction but there are now some new cabins, a few shops, and a community center. Really, there wasn't too much but we did help the local businesses that were there. We went to the General Store and bought fudge, although we haven't tried it yet, and then to The Cookie House and bought a huge chocolate chip cookie to share.

Watching us eat our cookie

Mark with some of the mountain homes behind him

We got back in the car once more and drove up towards Ski Valley. We found a parking spot at what appeared to be a very small ski "resort" and decided to keep walking up the road where it was gated off. There was a sign for a 1.5 mile trail but we never actually saw the trail because of all the snow so we just started walking up the gated off road (gated because it isn't maintained by the city and was covered in snow and ice). Turns out it was 1.75 miles up to the top where we went although we couldn't get to the very top because that was gated off again and we were asked to not go through that gate by a passing University of Arizona bus. Turns out it is the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter and you must only be able to go through the gate if you pay for tickets.

Either way, it finally felt like winter in Arizona and we saw TONS OF SNOW! Dry, light snow. It was great and Bentley had a blast! She was going bananas, almost like she does in the sand but it sure did tucker her out. When we finally got back home, she had some dinner and curled up and has been sleeping ever since. Below are some of the pictures we got on our hike up the road and Bentley frolicking in the snow. Some of them are blurry because I was using my manual lens but they show how much fun she was having so I had to include them.