North of Tucson, about two hours south from our location, are the Santa Catalina Mountains, the highest peak being Mount Lemmon. We can see it from here!

Today, while in Marana to shop a bit, I took a closer picture of the snow capped mountain range. I had no idea the name of this range or it’s highest peak until playing bocce ball yesterday and Erma told me, “yes that’s really snow and people actually go skiing up there!” Cool! We will have to make the trek someday.

No snow around here, however, in our mountains or the ones across the freeway. I guess when that last little cold front moved through last week, they got the snow on Mount Lemmon. Today was cloudy, so it was even easier to make the distinction between sunshine on the peaks and snow.

Mount Lemmon is located in the Coronado National Forest and was named for botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon who made the trek to the top by foot and by horse in 1881 with her husband, and E.O. Stratton who was a local rancher. It is also known as Babad Do’ag, or Frog Mountain.

Seen from the western side of Tucson, it looks like this:

The highest point is 9,171 ft. There is an observatory up there with telescopes that are still used today by several different universities for astronomical research. It once was the site of a USAF radar base, but was later abandoned and given to the US Forest Service.

I just thought it was interesting enough to research a little and thought I’d share these facts about it. If we ever drive up there via the Catalina Highway, I’ll take pics and blog about it I’m sure!