having met quite a few years back has kept me around. good stuff.

And these pictures are phenomenal!

The colors, the vistas, the amazing wonder of it all!



And I thought your pictures from Oregon could not be beat. I wuz wrong!

Your 'Nixon with Propeller Beanie' cracked me up! That's exactly what it looks like.

And meeting DUers in real life is always a pleasure. I just met another over the weekend when mwdem found me at the display of a half-scale replica of the Wall in Simi Valley, CA. We talked for a while and then mwdem returned later with spouse and the three of us talked more. Good people!

But I did not want to disrespect Mr. Hope. A retired USMC general, who is a childhood friend of mine, suggested the Nixon resemblance. And yes, DU meet-ups are good.

I am sure the actual visual is really beyond these pictures.

Not to diminish the breathtaking beauty of this place (and other places where I have taken some pretty good shots), nor to get to deep into my photographic philosophy, but sometimes the part is much greater than the whole (photo speaking). My job, after snapping the shutter, is to develop it in the most aesthetic form possible, using all the tools available - the most important being my mind and my eye.

But your comment is absolutely spot on: ".. the actual visual is really beyond these pictures .." It always is! But the photographer/artist can never, ever, capture the actual visual. I can only try to overwhelm you with my best interpretation of what you might key in on, were you there. Does that make sense?

Yucca Whipplei grew around Palmdale/Antelope Valley, CA where I grew up. Also called Spanish Bayonet and Our Lords Candle.

Thanks for the pictures.

Dasylirion wheeleri

I agree, it's sotol, also known as desert spoon. A beautiful plant, defining the look of the mid-elevations of Arizona.

He and his wife Arctic Jodie are real life friends of mine. . And these are gorgeous pictures, as usual.

I think your name came up as part of the miniscule DU group in a red state: Alaska. But I'm from a redder state: SC.

and interesting post.

just breath-taking ... as ususal!

Those are such beautiful pictures. Thank you for posting them. I wish people would post nature pictures of different wilderness/wild areas more often.

I wish I could help ID that plant. I have had the hardest time with IDing the plants in my yard and IDing plants in general. That's my biggest weakness. So, I have decided to save the flora until I've IDed as many of the fauna as possible. I have decided to pay close attention to everything that lives on my property and try to identify as much as I can of I don't know, mostly insects, bugs, arachnids, reptiles, birds, etc. so far. It is a sort of amateur (very amateur) attempt to rid myself of any fear of the things that live here. When I first moved here, I was terrified of the ginormous spiders I have here (Carolina Wolf Spiders, Black and yellow garden spiders, and Rabid Wolf Spiders, I have since found out) and the snakes, mostly black rat snakes and black racers.

Now, I know what species many of these new and once scary creatures are and that has somehow made me less afraid. The more I learn about the inhabitants that share my property with me, the less afraid I am and the more I actually have grown to care about them.

Now, I don't even bat an eyelash, no matter how long the snake or how big or how fast the spiders are. If they wanted me dead or harmed, they could easily have already done it by now. They haven't.


I am lousy at taking pictures though. So, I love it when I can see the pictures that those who are good at it can take.

Thank you, again, for the pictures.

Thank you.

And glad you had special visit!

I hope it gets to the top of the Greatest Page.

R&K

ago when I lived there. If you can see the Ventana Canyon Golf Course, you can see where I used to live.

So tranquil. Thanks.

We love the Tucson area. It is so beautiful, and the flora and fauna are incredible. The native plant and animal adaptations for desert life is so fascinating. The Saguaro NP is one of our favorite places. As many times as we have been there, we have missed going to Mt. Lemon, though.

Do you ever get a chance to get to an area where the desert has not been overgrazed? Would really love you to post pictures of a protected area, so people could understand how severely overgrazed and abused the desert lands are. We were in the Phoenix Mountain Park one year and got to see an area that had been protected from grazing for 40 years or more. The vegetation cover was incredible and it finally made sense to me why the pioneers thought the area was great to run cattle.

Thank you, again, for your beautiful pictures. Keep them coming, please.

Thank you.

a pleasure to see them!!

Love "Arizona Highways."

Thank you for getting yourself to this special place and documenting its wonders for all of us.

Where can I buy your book(s)? Or reproductions of your photographs? Or if they're not published yet, please plan on publishing this wonderful work.

I would have met you all at the base of the mountain ... I don't drive that road.

Thanks so much.

We sat on the patio and watched the sun go down and the clouds had some rain falling in them. It was surreal. I didn't have time to take photos with the tripod last night, but I've got a couple recently that I'm going to have Costco put on canvas. I love it here and the views are awesome.

P.S. I think that's a yucca type plant. Some have thicker spines and the flowers that grow 20-30 feet tall. Amazing plant life here. The critters scare the bejesus out of me sometimes but this is my favorite time of year - hot!

was hiking on Mt. Lemmon.

This brought back some lovely memories - thanks DemoTex.

they take me to a world where my view is not another apartment building

I can't help but think we would all be better off if more people could see the actual views, but such events occasionally bring destruction as well. Humans are odd creatures.

Thank you for these, and your service.

Just GLORIOUS, DemoTex! Thank you so much for sharing these scenes with us, since most of us can't come visit you as ArcticDave has.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!!! Savoring every single photo!

They're all wonderful even tricky dick!

You are an amazing photographer. Thanks for posting your photos. They are as eagerly awaited as sce's lolcats.

Rec

looks like a VERY thirsty sotal

Evergreen and the red/coral flower stalk is gorgeous.
I have several in my garden here in Albuquerque.

What a sight they are!

As I type, the one with a hill of barren trees fills my mind. The Sun will rise long after we've destroyed the Earth.

I think DK have yearly conventions - would to meet some of you guys!

Though one member posted above that he wouldn't take his car on that road.

Actually, the road down to the lookout (yes, DOWN!), is behind two locked gates. But it is incredibly bad! My Tacoma rig has the ARB "Old Man EMU" suspension (3" lift), and I take the road in 4-WHEEL LOW (only place I've ever used 4-WHEEL LOW). You have to. Yet, it beats the crap out of me.

Good to meet you today at the Mt. Lemmon Lookout, DemoTex. And looking at these photos again, they are all beautiful. Back in the 80s and 90s, in the film era, I carted my SLR plus 28mm, 50mm and 70-210 mm zoom lenses with me all over Arizona and western New Mexico on my many hikes and backpack trips into the wilds, and though I got many good photos, I don't know that they have the stunning clarity and color that these do. Plus, it seems like you're having a very different photographic experience, getting to know one place well, and waiting for the photo moments to come, as opposed to my rushing about and catching moments more randomly as I did. Excellent work!

Soon the "summer monsoons" will be upon us, first creeping closer day by day from the southeast, out of Sonora, and then finally reaching the Tucson area with thunderheads building up daily over the mountaintops by mid-afternoon. Some of my favorite memories of working from 1982 to 1984 at that no-longer-existent University of Arizona Physics Department telescope that was over near Mt. Bigelow was going up to the top of the telescope tower (it was shaped sort of like a lighthouse) on summer nights and watching the distant thunderheads flickering away madly and silently over the Pinalenos Range (Mt. Graham) or the more distant high Gila Range of western New Mexico. I also remember not so fondly cowering through the raging storms on the ground floor of the telescope building, or in the adjacent trailer at night. You are brave to be in these lookouts in thunderstorms, and I WOULD recommend the stool with the glass insulator feet--it certainly can't hurt.

Hiking and backpacking in the mountains in the 80s and 90s here in Arizona was such an immersion in the huge forests, never failing to leave me in awe, so completely unlike the woods of Maine where I grew up. And now almost all of them have burned, it seems, in the 20 years since, and I haven't been back to many of them, too sad to see what remains. The Santa Catalinas I visit for summer dayhikes to escape the heat, but the Rincons, Santa Ritas, Pinalenos, Chiricahuas, Gilas, Escuidilla Mountain, the Mogollon Rim from Alpine to Hannigan's Meadow and from Prescott to Show Low, the Mazatzals, the Sierra Anchas--I have not been back to them since they burned. In the rest of my hike today, down the control road, and back through Mt. Lemmon Meadow up near the peak above you, I'd pass small patches of tall unburned trees, and remembered when the forests were solid. But the unburned forest was artificial, the result of decades of fire suppression, and now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, with too much burning off, too hot, burning away the ten thousand year old soils to the bare rock beneath, and we, and our children's children's children's children will not again see the mountain slopes covered thick with Douglas Fir.

May your work there at Mt. Lemmon Lookout help to keep our forests safe this summer!

--Tom

Mac Tippins will spend four to five months on duty at the Lemmon Rock Lookout searching for fires.

The first lookout on Lemmon Rock was built in 1902. Since then, the site has been used to watch for wildfires in the valleys surrounding Tucson and other lands as far away as the Little Dragoon Mountains near Willcox.

The current building on Lemmon Rock dates to 1936.


Nestled in the pines of Mt. Lemmon, the Lemmon Rock Lookout sits on an outcrop of rock from which much of the Tucson metro area is visible.

As this year's new fire lookout, Tippins will actively search for fires for a standard workweek, but also be on call any time he is in the tower, which also serves as his residence.


https://news.azpm.org/p/news-fp-featured/2014/6/26/38428-keeping-a-look-out-for-fires/

Arizona Public Media does a good job with their camera work and editing. The video slideshow at the bottom of the page was an added bonus. I hope you like how it all turned out, Mac.

Now that the monsoon rains have finally arrived, things should be getting busy for you. We had 1/4" of downpour in midtown Tucson yesterday afternoon, the first measurable rainfall since March 1st.