This morning was a lot like all the mornings in Texas and New Mexico except we are in Tucson, Arizona. I think the sun always comes up bright most every morning in the south west. The morning weather forecast was for sunny skies with highs of 71, 71, 72, 71, 71, 71 and 72 for the next 7 days. The lows vary a couple of degrees but hover around the 40 degree mark. What a tough job the weatherman has in this part of the country.
We met our friends the Fedderly's and Sue Wells for lunch at the Olive Garden. We had a nice lunch and a very good visit. Evelyn brought them all up on the news from Cherokee Village area. After lunch, we decided to head south to Mexico and see what was going on in the Nogales area.
First we went down Mission road and visited the San Xavier Mission. It was founded in 1692 and built in 1783 to 1797. It is still today much the same as it was when built. It has been and is still in use all this time with 3 masses every day. It was built for and still used by the same Indian decendants.
We traveled on down the Mission road, not know where it would lead, but we wound around mountains of mine tailings. We did not see what was being mined but apparently it has been mined for years as the tailings were piled as high as some of the mountains around and still working. We finally wound up in the town of Green Valley. This is quite a large town with lots of agriculture as there is water available and lots of houses up the sides of the mountains on either side of the valley. We picked up I19 and took it south to Nogales and then picked up sr82, a scenic route to the east. In Nogales there were hundreds of trucks and huge transfer terminals where the semis would unload merchandise and then it would be reloaded to go into Mexico. Some trailers would be dropped by US drivers and they would pick up another one and head back north with it. The one they brought down would be picked up and taken into Mexico. On across 82 we drove through several mountain passes and changed elevation several hundred feet. When we got to Patagonia we started up and by the time we got to Sonoita we were at 5350 feet. We headed north on sr83 toward Vail and shortly we started down and we had a 4 mile 5% grade down the mountains and by the time we reached I10 near Vail we were at about 3100 feet. It was just getting dark which made the sunset on the mountains a changing panorama of colors. We finally got back to Tucson and our campground home about 6:30pm. A very enjoyable day.