Vacation Pictures

My 4-day trip to Arizona was successful. Traveling alone is not something I've done on a regular basis, but I got along just fine. Weaving my way through two airports, finding my car rental, making my way out of a new city - Phoenix - and heading south to Green Valley, the only real difficulty I had was being tired! I left the morning after the time change (lost an hour) and on v-e-r-y little sleep, I arrived at my destination in one piece.

My destination was my uncle and aunt's winter home in Green Valley, about a half hour south of Tucson. My mother had been staying with them for the week, and she would be traveling home with me. Thank goodness for GPS systems! I plugged their address into my phone and let "senorita" tell me where to go. What a godsend.

Okay, let's look at some snapshots. Having never been to Arizona or anywhere in the southwest, this was all very new territory for me, so I took tons of pictures. The landscape, the mountains, the gorgeous skies, the wildlife, the cactus - all was new and wonderful.

View of golf course from my uncle's back patio.

A gorgeous sunrise, looking northeast from patio.

A roadrunner hopped onto the wall surrounding the patio.

The Santa Rita Mountains to the east of Uncle Bill's condo are part of Coronado National Forest; he took us on a drive through Box Canyon, and the pictures above are all from the car as we trekked through.

We mostly went south and east from Green Valley, visiting towns of Sonoita, Patagonia, Nogales, Tubac and Tumacacori. From Nogales, I could look across into Mexico and I actually saw some border walls. On our way back north, we went through a border checkpoint, and with Uncle Bill's Ohio tags, the agent gave us an "O-H" to which we all responded "I-O" - all good Buckeye fans, right!?

Uncle Bill took us to see two Spanish mission churches. The first picture, above, is Mission San Jose de Tumacacori located north of Nogales. It was founded in 1691 by the Jesuits, and was later operated by the Franciscans.

The second picture is of Mission San Xavier, located north of Green Valley. It is quite impressive, and is visible to travelers (myself included) heading south out of Tucson on I-19. I was glad we drove up there to have a look around. It is stunningly gorgeous and has undergone years of painstaking restoration. So much history in these two places, and when I think of all the missions I did not see, I think it would be a big task to learn and understand just this one area of Arizona's history.

The main altar inside Mission San Xavier.

We left Uncle Bill's on Wednesday morning, made a stop in Tucson to visit with some relatives on my father's side of the family - his first cousin Margaret and her daughter, Terri. It was nice to connect with them and it gives me cause to revisit my genealogy material which I have ignored for far too long.

Cousin Margaret (Dad's 1st cousin)

Margaret's daughter, Cousin Terri

We then went on to Phoenix and over to Goodyear where we attended a spring training game between the Cleveland Indians and the Los Angeles Angels. Gorgeous day for baseball, and many of the top players were in the lineup - Kluber on the mound, Lindor at shortstop, Zimmer in centerfield, Kipnis at second, Ramirez at third, Chisenhall in right. I was a happy fan. And we won 7-0!

There you have the highlights of my 4-day vacation. Mom and I arrived home right on schedule, and are already talking about plans to return next year.

Happy Quilting, Friends!