Arrived in Arizona

St. Xavier Mission

Mom and I arrived in Phoenix/Mesa last night and then drove to Green Valley for about two hours and made it to Aunt Ruth’s and Uncle Bernie’s at about 1:00 a.m. (AZ time). It was a good flight and a very dark drive (there are no lights along the highways in AZ), and we were tired but Ruth and Bernie were up waiting for us!

This morning mom and Aunt Ruth already had their walk in by the time I got up out of bed. After breakfast we got in the car and headed out to do some sightseeing. First on the list was the St. Xavier Mission, outside of Green Valley. It was a beautiful, old church that was overseen by the Franciscan order and is the oldest European structure in Arizona. The sanctuary is gorgeous - very Baroque - and gilded with gold. Gabby Giffords mother, who is a local artist, reconstructed a set of lions by the pulpit.

Cactus every where!

Next we visited a copper mine, didn’t take the tour but walked around and stopped at the gift shop. Then we stopped at the Green Valley Pecan Shop (there are hundreds of pecan trees along the side of the highway) and bought some pecan hot sauce, pecan toffee, caramel & pecan popcorn… I’m hoping that I don’t eat it all in the next week ☺

Tomorrow we are heading up to Casa Grande to have lunch with my Aunt Cheryl (Dad’s sister) and hopefully see my cousins DeeDee and Darcy. We haven’t seen them much since they moved to AZ and it will be nice to reconnect. Uncle Bernie has a car show – I would like to get to that too but we’ll see how the day goes.