Loved your pictures and commentary, Emily. If you can believe it, I have only been to Tucson 4 times, despite living in Tempe/Scottsdale for 16 years. And 2 of the times I was there, was during the year my DS #2 was going to U of A, long after I left AZ. Tucson is just nicer and less like LA, and I often have rued the day I decided to go to ASU for grad school, instead of U of A.
And, a butte is a geographical formation: an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller than mesas, plateaus, and table landforms.
They often look like small hills just sticking up out of the ground, not part of a group of hills or mountains.