Mount Lemmon just north of Tucson started off life as an internment camp during WWII. For conscientious objectors. The prisoners built a highway up to the mountain. The camp has long since closed but now there is a small community called Summerhaven up about 8,000 ft. I took my parents there today. It was pretty nice. Mostly quiet except for the construction equipment. You could see where the trees had burned during a devastating fire in 2003. A lot of homes were destroyed and have since been rebuilt. The houses all have a Swiss chalet feel to them. We stopped at The Cookie House for a ginourmous cookie sat outside in the cool mountain air and had some other snacks & drinks we’d brought with us.
All in all it was a nice outing. Got us out of the heat in the valley for a little while. Currently at 105F.
There is also a ski resort up on Mount Lemmon which is the southern most place you can ski in the continental US. Anway they turned what was a not so happy place into a nice place to visit. Though unless you are hiking, camping, or skiing there really isn’t much else to do up there.
Update 6/11/2010
I’ve finally posted some photos from the trip on my blog. I posted a subset of those on my Facebook page. Those have captions. These do not.
