Making the most out of our stay in Tucson we have plans to see the “Dove of the Desert “ today
Mission San Xavier del Bac is an historic Catholic Church dating back to 1797, when southern Arizona was still part of New Spain. It is the oldest intact European structure in Arizona.
Amazingly, the church still has its original statuary, murals, and paintings!
From the mission it was only a short drive to the Tucson Mountain Park and it’s neighbor the Saguaro National Park.
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| Tucson Mountain Park and Saguaro National Park just west of Tucson |
Unbelievably, this 20,000 acre park is just on the western edge of downtown Tucson. It is one of the largest natural resource areas owned and managed by a municipal government.
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| West Gates Pass Road |
We had a beautiful day to explore the park. We drove through the middle of the park on Gates Pass Road which takes you up and over the Tucson Mountains. There a lots of turnouts and parking areas along the route, which allowed us to get out and explore our surroundings. The broken cloud cover played shadows and light over the ridges and peaks.
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| Visitors Center, Saguaro National Park West |
We chose to go to the visitors center in the neighboring Saguaro National Park knowing that it would most likely be closed due to the government shut down and it was. The trails and viewing areas around the exterior of the visitors center were still accessible and it was well worth the trip. The Sonoran Desert never fails to impress. This has been a wet Fall, and the desert is unusually green and lush. After our stop, we continued on the gravel roads north along the west side of the park, turning back east towards Tucson on Pictured Rocks Road, and back into the city.
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| Hotel Congress main entrance |
For Christmas day we had plans to go to dinner with our friends Marla and Kermit. We chose to go to the Hotel Congress in downtown.
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| Telephone switchboard from the early 1900s |
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| Phone booth, now a relic of years gone by |
Through the years the old hotel survived fires and remodeling, and ownership changes, It is an eclectic mix of all the years. Just some of the artifacts that I was delighted to see were the old hotel switchboards and of course, the phone booths in the lobby, now retrofit with modern day pay phones.
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| Joan and me at the Cup Cafe in the Hotel Congress |
The Hotel's Cup Cafe served up a wonderful Christmas dinner for the four of us, and we went home with a big piece of double chocolate cake!
After Christmas Kermit and I want to check out Biosphere 2 in the town of Oracle, just north of here. This will be my second visit and Kermit's first. Stay tuned!
Merry Christmas!
Your Traveling Friends
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