Back in mid-January of 2007 we decided to experience a drier alternative to sunny Northwest Florida and we traveled to Tucson Arizona to enjoy the dry desert warmth and the southernmost peaks of Rocky Mountains. We had a mostly uneventful trip across the Gulf Coast and through the entirety of Texas.
We didn't expect to find snow on I-10 in New Mexico , across the continental divide, and into southern Arizona. Snow is not that common this close to the Mexican border at any time of the year. The locals were delighted and closed the schools so that the kids could play in the snow. While we weren't delayed by the temporary closing of I-10 due to the snow, I wasn't able to stop and take photos of the incredible scene of the desert cloaked in a fresh layer of snow. (There were no shoulders and barely one drivable lane on I-10 in the morning.) When I finally found a rest area to stop (welcome station for Arizona), there was fog! The above photo and the following one don't do the beauty of the scene we experienced.
Further into Arizona the snow was mostly gone and only seen in the shadows.
Our first stop in Arizona was the eastern section of the Saguaro National Park. Note the snow still in the mountains to the east.
We spent a week at a hotel north of Tucson in
Oro Valley near Catalina. Here is the view (to the east) outside our window.
This is a view from our hotel looking southward down the highway. The valley is at 3.223 feet (952 meters), the mountains are over 9,000 feet.
Living in "flat-as-a-pancake" Florida, I really loved the daily mountain views from our hotel.
I took many sunrise photos from the parking lot of our hotel.
In the late afternoon I rode north up the road for about a mile and took some sunset photos.
While waiting for the sun to set, I discovered that the late afternoon sun really highlighted the mountains in the east really well.
Early morning mountain shadow can be very pretty to see and experience.
But I learned that the afternoon sun can really make mountains look special.
Here is a unique, hell, I've never seen a sunset like this before.
Timing in landscape photography is everything. The above photo is the same scene as the one above it, but it was taken
five minutes later!
We saw lots of cactus, including giant saguaro serving as bird houses.
Here are some fishhook(needles curved like a fish hook) barrel cactus next to prickly pear cactus.
Teddy bear
cholla cactus looks almost as cute as its namesake, but is a nasty bear if you get stuck by it. Pieces get broken off very easily and painful to remove.
Ocotillo (the tall sticks on the right) are full of sharp spines.
More cactus of various types.
A large field of saguaro cactus in the western section of Saguaro NP.
Mary Lou says I took far too many pictures of saguaro cactus. "If you seen one, you have seen them all" was her frequent compliant. I think the cactus in the above photo dispels that notion. I may be getting a little anthropomorphic about that cactus in the foreground, but he seems to be trying to lead his compatriots out of the desert.
We spent one day driving up to Mount
Lemmon (9157 ft). It was warm and about 80 degrees down in Tucson but much cooler up on top.
We ran into snow on the landscape half way up the mountain.
We saw more snow the higher we went up. Luckily we only ran into a little ice from snow melt on the roads, but the parking areas sometimes were covered with snow and ice.
Up near the top of the mountain the snow got much more deeper.
We were pleasantly surprised by the beauty of Sabino Canyon just outside Tucson. It had great walking trails.
I didn't wander from the paved path after reading the above sign and having read about a recent attack on an elderly man by a mountain lion.
Sabino Canyon may be only a minor player in the national park system, but it was beautiful and filled with wildlife, especially birds. I hadn't heard about this park before going there, but the locals seem to enjoy using it for hiking and power walking.
I was intrigued by the palo verde trees in the southwest. They have almost nonexistent leaves but have most of their chlorophyll in their branch bark to do their "photosynthesis thing."
One last desert landscape photo from Saguaro NP
Some of the 200 acres of flowers at Wild Seed Farm.
More wild beauties.
Of course I had to include some Texas bluebonnets.
A variety of flowers in their show garden.
While these flowers above look like lupine, I believe they were listed as larkspur.
Lots of poppies for sale.
Large fields of flowers from which they sell the seeds.
Not sure how those few white flowers got into that field of blue.
Had to include this photo of a cat in a bird bath in another garden in that town.
The butterfly house had a decent display of butterflies ( a monarch and short tail swallowtail). 
I believe that this is a queen butterfly.
Some type of orange fritillary.
Hmmm, I need to check my Audubon Butterfly book.
Another orange fritillary
