When we were visiting the Saguaro National Park Donna was speaking with one of the park rangers asking about other 'do-not-miss' places for us to see. He suggested we take a ride up the Sky Island Scenic Byway to the top of Mt. Lemmon. It turned out to be a good suggestion.
The byway runs for about 27 miles and tops out at just over 9200 feet above sea level, a gain of about 6000-feet. Located in the Coronado National Forest and the Santa Catalina mountains, the byway has dozens of scenic turnouts, campgrounds and picnic areas. We were going to drive the byway on a Saturday so we expected traffic to be heavy but were pleasantly surprised when that wasn't the case.
The road starts out in the high desert with giant Saguaro Cactus verywhere. As I mentioned in a previous post, for every 1000' in elevation it's like moving 600-miles north so by the time we reached the top we had moved into Canadian pine forest with snow on the ground. Towering pine trees were all around us.
The town of Summerhaven, located at the top of Mt. Lemmon, is the southernmost ski resort in North America. The park ranger at Saguaro National Park told us about a small cafe in Summerhaven that was supposed to have the best homemade pie so we were really looking forward to that. The pie was good but it wasn't that good...especially at $7 per slice! We shared a slice. Much better was The Cookie Cabin. Their homemade pizza and ginormous chocolate chip cookies were not only absolutely delicious but much more reasonably priced.
Summerhaven has some fulltime residents but mostly its comprised of people looking to escape the heat of Tucson's summer or to enjoy some winter skiing. The village reminded us of mountain villages in Colorado or Montana. The cabins...some very large cabins...were perched on the sides of the mountains and carried hefty price tags. We read an ad for a 1-bedroom cabin with concrete counter tops (that's what it said) for $500K. The town suffered a devastating fire in 2003 when over 300 buildings were destroyed. Evidence of the fire is still abundant in the form of dead trees and cabin foundations. The Cookie Cabin had a large 'State Farm Is Not A Good Neighbor' banner attached to their building. We didn't ask since we didn't want to open old wounds but suspect that some fire policies may not have been renewed after the fire.
On the drive up the byway we stopped at the first turnout and noticed a gentleman in a car talking on a two-way radio. The car had a large whip antenna on the roof and thinking that he might be a ham I walked up and introduced myself. His name was Les Veenstra, amateur radio call K1YCM/M0YCM, an American currently residing in Great Britain. He was trying to work the high frequency low bands (short wave for you non-hams) but wasn't having much luck.
We stopped at nearly all of the turnouts and vistas where I was able to hike a bit and climb out on some rock formations. The views were stunning. We had packed a picnic lunch and found a table in a wooded picnic grounds. We also drove down several 4-wheel drive roads and were able to see sights that those with ordinary autos miss.
It took us nearly 5-hours to get up the mountain and just about 45-minutes to get down. What a day!
