Come and Hike With Me

 The Happy Ladies Club is on the move again, and I'm loving it.  We drove up past the ski run on Mt. Lemmon  (have you forgotten that Tucson is home to the southern-most ski resort in the Continental USofA?) and climbed even higher.

Yes, as the sign says, we were 8800' above sea level when we paused to take these pictures.

Pausing was a good thing - the air is quite thin at that altitude and we were all feeling it.

faces blocked to protect the innocent

Happy Lady Hikers from near and far were brave enough to peer around the corner of the Fire Lookout Station to get a glimpse of the cozy living space inside.  Replete with a refrigerator, an outdoor shower, and a guy wire holding you onto the mountain..... what more does one need?

Did you think that I was kidding about the guy wire?  This is how it is connected to the roof.

Any building which requires that kind of support is not one which I choose to hold onto and peer into.

I was content to stay on terra firma and pretend to be Ansel Adams.

The undergrowth is thriving since the pines burned in the Aspen Fire, in the summer of 2003.

The ferns are doing better than the aspens and the lodge pole pines.

The soil is so poor.

The regeneration will take generations.

Meanwhile, the black-eyed susans have a chance to strut their stuff.

Most of them seem to have bloomed last week, but these two waited for us and we thank them.

There was columbine

and then there was this

and this

and this

and this

and for a while I forgot that I was in the desert.

It was a really nice hike.

Thanks for coming along.