Saturday, December 21
The Mission San Xavier del Bac is our 3rd and final stop for today. It has been a full fun-filled day.
Mission San Xavier (pronounced as "hauv-e-air") del Bac is a historic Spanish Catholic mission named in 1692 by Padre Eusebio Kino for a pioneering Christian missionary and co-founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuit Order), Francis Xavier. The San Xavier del Bac Mission was built between 1783 and 1797 by the Tohono O'odham tribe. This majestic mission is also called "White Dove of the Desert".
This is what you see the moment you walk in. The detail work was amazing!
This area is just off the front to the left side.
The candles got cut off in this picture, but this area is off the front to the right side.
This is the back prayer area. It was so peaceful!
This hillside was just a short walk east of the building. As you can see, there is a monument of some sort at the top. Lots of people climbed to the top. We did not.
There were at least 8-10 vendors set up in the parking lot. They were selling fry bread. We passed on the fry bread also.
Tomorrow will be another big day. The weather is supposed to be beautiful so we plan to go to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
Sunday, December 21 continued
Old Tucson Studios was our next stop. Lots of movies and TV series were filmed here. We were told that this place was still used even this year for a movie.
As we came in, this was the first building we saw. There was a train that circled the perimeter of the grounds.
Here is the train that circled the grounds.
Down the dirt road was the Wheelwright Wagon Repairs and a small one room school house.
Here is a close-up of the wagon repair place.
This is the inside of the one room school house. It was really narrow.
Walking down this wooden sidewalk seemed to be real.
More buildings for different movies or TV series.
They even created petroglyphs.
This was the town courthouse. One of the sheriffs was walking the street. The lady in blue is the lady that ran the town saloon.
Beautiful dress she is wearing. She was the announcer for a dance by the saloon hall girls that we watched.
This is the hotel saloon where we watched the girls dance.
Some kids and parents got a hay ride with Santa as he came into town.
This is the High Chaparral TV series set. This is the house. Below are several more pictures from this set.
Here is the barn from the High Chaparral set. Look familiar?
This is a carriage and stage coach used on the series also.
These store fronts were also used in the series. From the distance we are it looks pretty real.
There were 2 longhorn cows each with a calf in a corral near the High Chaparral house.
Anyone could get a ride in this stage coach. We did not. This was not at the High Chaparral set.
This church was at Old Tucson Studios also.
This is the street view where we are about to watch a gun fight.
Here is the start of the gun fight between the robbers. These two just robbed the bank and are leaving. See the bags "of money"?
Here is one of the robbers shooting at another robber. See the smoke from the gun?
This princess was watching the gun fight and decided the gun fire was too loud so covered her ears. Cute!
Next we went by the jail. Dusty got incarcerated. Ha! Ha!
Here was a gallows used on sets. It was blocked so no one could go up the stairs. I guess they did not want any accidents.
This mission front was where we watched stunt men do some of their stunts.
This guy gets shot and falls forward. He lands just behind a short wall where we assume an air mattress was for him to land on. You can see the short 3-sided walls in the prior picture.
This guy is sliding down this rope from the roof of the mission. He stopped in the middle of the yard in front of the mission.
This was another stunt where the ladder was pushed backwards and he fell behind the wood fence. Notice how stiff he looks. He looked that way all the way down.
This was the last of the shows we watched. We left Old Tucson Studios and headed for an active mission called San Xavier Mission.
Sunday, December 21
Friends from Texas surprised us and came out to visit. They arrived late Saturday, December 20 and will stay until Friday, December 26. We have not done any site-seeing yet so excited to be able to share it with friends. We decided to go several places over the next few days. We took so many pictures at each of the places we visited that I will be making individual posts for each visit.
Today, Sunday, December 21, our first stop was Saguaro National Park.
This is on the way to the Saguaro National Park Visitors Center. It was amazing to me to see all these saguaro cactus, then a valley with lots of water and mountains beyond that.
It was different seeing lots of tall cactus instead of trees.
We learned that saguaro cactus don't even start getting buds until they are about 50 years old AND they only live on average about 200 years. The local Indians believe each saguaro cactus is a dead relative.
Gila monster lizards are supposed to be plentiful here. This one is stuffed. We did not see any in the wild.
This is a typical view along the road we drove through the park.
Tic thought this dead cactus looked like a horse head. Do you see it?
There are at least 5 kinds of cactus in this picture. Can you find them all?
Look at the huge rock balanced on the lower right side of the picture.
Here is a close-up. It makes you wonder how that big boulder got settled there.
When we stopped & took a hiking trail, we came to these petroglyphs.
It was interesting how many petroglyphs there were in such a small area.
Look how tall these saguaro cactus are and they are still fairly young. We stood next to one to give a perspective. Only one had a bud starting to grow. After this stop we left the park for our next destination of Old Tucson Studio.
Wednesday, Dec 10
We moved from Benson, AZ to Tucson today. After visiting almost a dozen RV parks/resorts we decided on Rincon Country West RV Resort as our destination for the next month. It is a fairly large facility with about 1100 units with lots of activities.
All interior roads are paved with pretty level gravel parking pads and full hook ups. Each site has a concrete pad with a picnic table and a separate parking space for your tow vehicle. There are palm trees at every site.
This was before we put the flags up. I can tell I have not washed the front window yet because the screens are not up yet, so we are not completely set up yet.
Just outside the office is this large model train display. The "Railroaders" are still working on setting up all the buildings and getting the trains to run smoothly. It is pretty elaborate.
The picture above and the one below are close-ups of parts the display. You can also see some of the people working on the set-up.
None of the trains were running at this time. We have walked by since and seen them working on the track where derailments seem to occur.
This is the view on the way to the heated swimming pool. The pool is heated to 84 degrees. I can walk right in. It is GREAT. I've been doing pool aerobics in the mornings about 11am. It is fun!
This is our first evening sunset taken from the steps at our front door. By the way, there is no other door into the coach so I guess "front" is not necessary.
This is just a few minutes after the previous picture. I was impressed with the colors in the sky.
The next day it rained. When it stopped raining this beautiful rainbow appeared. There was actually a second rainbow but it is faint enough that it is hard to see in this picture.
Here is a close up of the rainbow. It was soooooo radiant!!
The sunset that evening was magnificent also. The high temperatures have been in the upper 60s to the mid 70s with lows in the upper 40s to low 50s so far. This is our kind of winter.
Some of the permanent residents have really gone all out decorating for Christmas.
Tic has joined a wood carving group and is learning to carve.
He decided to start with a buzzard. This is the example for him to follow. Obviously it is carved and painted, so this is the goal.
Here is Tic's progress. He has only worked on his carving twice for about 4 hours total. I'm impressed for his first attempt!
I'm pleased to be settled long enough to be able to take advantage of some of the activities here. I have enrolled in yoga twice a week and am going to pool aerobics several times a week. It is held Monday - Saturday. We have been here 1 week and I have been 3 times now.
We have not been sight-seeing yet. We are just enjoying the activities here and meeting lots of people. We played Bingo last night. We were told Bingo was the big social event of the week here.
There is so much to see and do, we are investigating before we start, so we are efficient in our sight-seeing. Next post will be after a day-trip somewhere in the area.
