Mount Lemmon

Our last day in Tucson!  We've done the driving tour of Mt. Lemmon many times before, but it never gets old.

This info board shows the different zones you go through as you drive up the mountain.  The first stop, Babad Do'ag Vista Point overlooks all of Tucson.  Here it's still in the Sonoran ecozone, with cactus wrens and curve-billed thrashers calling.

At the next stop in Molino Canyon you're in the semi-desert grassland. 

 The saguaros are gone and we were hearing rock and canyon wrens.

Rock wren contemplates life in the canyon

Beautiful Molina Basin campground is still in this zone.

I'd love to camp here but hauling our trailer up the mountain is another matter.

We stopped at  General Hitchcock campground, which is in the Oak Woodland and Chaparral Zone.

Still some snow up here

Here we saw yellow-eyed juncos.

Higher up on the mountain we were into the pine trees and here we found the Provincial bird of BC.

Stellers Jay

Finally you get to the Ski resort of Summerhaven where you can find Douglas fir trees.  The joint was hopping with Tucsonites out playing in the snow.  It was so busy we just turned around and headed back down the mountain.  Otherwise we would have checked for chickadees and red breastfed nuthatches.

On our way down we stopped at several Vista points to admire the snow

and the hoodoos

And the seven cataracts.

Count the cararacts

Back home we had some visitors to the hummingbird feeder.