I have yet to wake up and see a sunrise that I regretted being up for. Waking up for the sunrise when you are camping is usually not that hard to do. First of all, you aren't that comfortable anyway. Second, you are usually cold & it is going to be warmer when you get in to the car to drive to whatever lookout you want to see it from. And third, for this sunrise, we weren't sleeping any way. There were very high winds coming through the area, and so the tent was basically on top of us the whole night. So when 4:30 am came, we were both ready to get out of the tent and drive up the mountain. We put our fire wood (which we couldnt use since there was a fire ban in that campground), and gallons of water in side of the tent & prayed that it wouldnt blow away while we were gone. In retrospect, my tent has blown away before (out of Ryan and Ana's backyard, which has a large wall around it), and we should have just taken it down. We left it up though. Because we were being lazy. And we tired. We went on a hunt of coffee.. We found a QT. And a guy with incredibly small hands, who gave us directions on how to find the main road up the mountain. Very slow, painfully detailed, directions that is. I didn't notice his hands. I just wanted him to cut to the chase and tell us left here, right here, right, and then left; or something of the sort. All Kelsey talked about for the next couple of days was how small the man's hands in QT were. 4pm, later that day... "I just cant get over how small that QT guys' hands were!" I am sad I missed it.
These are our sunrise faces. Tired, covered in sand thanks to the wind the night before, glasses, and puffy eyes. Gotta love it.
Lovely views. So worth it. If I could do it over, I would wear real shoes, and have a winter jacket. We were freezing. And chacos flip flops are amazing, but not meant for hiking.
It was windy.
At the top of Mount Lemmon, is a little town called Summershaven. They had a really bad forest fire a few years back and have not recovered. It used to be a beautiful, busy place, with amazing summer homes on it. Now it has a ton of empty homes that won't sell. We drove through summer haven and gawked at these beautiful, deserted, rundown homes. It was sad.
We drove south after the sunrise... We didn't really have a plan, besides to see Kartchner Caverns. Theres nothing around Kartchner, so we drove further south and visited Bisbee. It was a lot of driving, but totally worth it. Our other option was to go visit Nogales, Mexico, since we were so close to the border. We didn't know how safe that would be, so we decided not to...
We pulled over & took a little stroll down a path to a creek, and soaked in a bit of the sun...
It was a choose-your-own-adventure kind of day.
Beautiful cottonwood trees, by the creek.
I really wanted a tumbleweed shot. Thanks Kelsey for catching these tumbleweed & tumbling it across the path so I could get a pic. Yes, this is totally staged.
Bisbee, AZ.
A real cowboy.
I loved all of the vintage cars!!!
and art!
and beautiful homes built in to the side of the mountain, boasting bright colors! It reminded me a lot of santa fe, but on a much smaller scale.
Seriously, I felt like I was in a movie set!
See the old greyhound bus down there? How cool is that?
After wandering around Bisbee, we drove up to Kartchner Caverns. It was pretty unbelievable. I have never seen anything like it. We were not allowed to take pictures.... Honestly, the caverns kind of creeped me out. It was weird being in the dark and have a huge expanse before us. But you couldn't see it until the lights were on. And then all of this stuff was dripping, and forming weird crystals, and it is super fragile. I was imagining myself being the person finding the caverns, and it sounds horrible. The most memorable part of the tour, was when we walked in to the theater to watch the movie about the caverns before we saw them... We were a couple minutes late, so all of the lights were out. It was so dark inside the theater we couldn't figure out where the seats were, much less which ones were empty! I almost sat on a lady, and we started laughing. It just got worse from there.. We sat in the theater for another 5 minutes just cracking up laughing, trying to stifle it, but it got louder and louder every time we tried to control it. It was really bad for everyone around us, so we left. We both had tears streaming down our cheeks, it was so funny. Our favorite part of the day was definitely the failed movie experience. I am sorry to the people in the theater... we were trying so hard to pull it together. But seriously, why arent there any lights in there??!
Our overly energetic tour guide had some pretty great quotes.. I wish I would have written them down... "And look here, the bacon grows, RIGHT NEXT TO THE PATH!"
A storm coming through... And then, since we hadn't really done enough that day, we decided to go visit Saguaro National Park. It was amazing.
360 degrees of beautiful scenery.
Me, loving desert life.
For dinner, we stopped in Tucson, and went to a restaurant recommended to me by one of my coworkers who has lived in Tucson her whole life. I forget what this little mexican restaurant was called. Kelsey thought they had forgotten about us; I assured her it was more of an authentic mexican restaurant and they are more laid back about how quickly they serve you. It was delicious, warm food. We had brought firewood and food that could be cooked over a fire. When we arrived at our campgrounds, we found out they only allowed coal or propane fires. Cold hotdogs didn't sound that appealing. So the night before, we wandered through the campground, trying to figure out who looked like the friendliest people to let us cook a frank over their fire. We found a hippy couple with a large truck, two little girls, and hot coals. They let us cook our dogs, and told us all about how unhealthy certain foods were, while they smoked a few cigarettes. It was odd. We hung out with them for the evening though, and were very fascinated by their opinions on life. So, having a warm dinner at this mexican restaurant was a treat. And we didn't have to listen to any government conspiracy theories in order to eat.
This is such a weird picture. I love it. Just soak in all of the awkward elements here.
This is the mine, in Bisbee, AZ.
The edited versions of the photos...
