We next headed towards Tucson. But on the way, we took a few detours to Flourence and Coolidge to look at a few more houses and then took a side road south. This side road proved to be an adventure in itself. Stopped at a few picnic sites and then saw a lot of what appeared to be boondockers out in the desert. We took a rather rough dirt road out to greet them with the hopes that we would be staying there for the night...... well, the road got narrower and rougher, we had to put it in 4 wheel drive and then when we saw that we were in an area inhabited by dogs, little kids and lots old 60's hippies, Viet Nam P.O.W.'s, drug dealers all living together in patched up old buses and shanties surrounded by "No Trespassing", "Come In and Get Shot" and "Trespassers Bill be Hung" types of signs... we decided to turn around. But by now the road was too far gone, too narrow and surrounded by washed out gullies. While attempting to turn around in a place that was impossible to turn around in, an older, hard looking, twitching lady rode up on a 4 wheeler. Long stoy shortened. She was friendly and guided us to a place where we could turn around. When we got to the paved road we did not look back and kept going.
We drove 20 or 30 miles and pulled off at a Wal-Mart parking lot, had dinner at Olive Garden and retired, with a good batch of Thank You Prayers!
The next day we spent the whole day making insurance and doctor arrangements for Ann to get some blood work done to be sent to her doctor in Oregon. His condition on letting her go away for so long was that we send him regular blood work for him to monitor her. The hospital that had the lab that they sent us to was the hospital where they were keeping Congresswoman Giffords who had been shot. There was ample press and security galore which made it hard to find a place to park our big rig. But with the help of Security, we got in and got the work done. Here is a pix of the front of the hospital. See all the flowers and security?
Then we went to a Desert Diamond Casino where we parked for a few days to see the sites here and go to church.
On Saturday, 1/22, we toured San Xavier Bac Mission, a Franciscan Mission established in the mid 1700's. It is a fully functioning Franciscan Church and is in the process of being restored and maintained by local and European Artisans.
We spent all day here. It was amazing!!
We felt like we were in Europe or Mexico at a grand cathedral. This is their baptism basin. It's an original!!
The Spanish lay out was similar to the missions in California, only on a more grand scale.
St. Francis of Assisi, one of Ann's heroes.
There were Indian fry bread vendors here. We had two types of fry bread and fruit for lunch. Delicious! There were ragged looking dogs around that politely asked if we would share our meal with them. We felt like we were in a third world country.
There was also a
Mexican Quinsiera (Coming of age celebration) going on in the chapel while we were there. It was beautiful!!
After,we walked to a hill nearby that had many land markings on it. We were curious and found that it had a shrine up near the top where story has it that the "Mother of God" appeared to some Franciscans in 1858.
A view of the Mission from mid way down the hill.
The hill that keeps the shrine we just walked up to.
Dumpster Diving Dog! He would stick his head in and pull out goodies to dine on!
Grabbing!
