Tumacacori | Arizona | National Historical Park

This mission is located on Route 19 not far from the U.S./Mexican border at Nogales, Arizona.  I have passed it a few times, and wanted to visit - but not with my 5th wheel attached.  I had the opportunity to visit it with a friend last week - and I learned how to pronounce the name!  It's pronounced "Toom ah kahk ah ree" - my own phonetics.

The next two photos are close up of the bell tower and the front of the mission entrance, which you can see has been eroded through time and environmental pressures.  The bell tower itself was never finished.

Inside, the walls have also eroded, but they are very thick, as you will see in some of these photos.

The altar area has a domed ceiling, shown below, and you can see how thick the walls are by the windows in that area.

A food storage building is shown below, they had to be able to store food during the winter season for the residents.

The priests lived in the building shown in the photos below.

And my favorite bird, the roadrunner, is watching over things.

Although this sunset was not at the mission, there have been some very nice ones since I've been back in Arizona.

Tucson, Arizona | Snyder Hill

I have been camping at a patch of BLM land in South Tucson (corner of San Joaquin and Route 86) with a friend who has just left for San Carlos, Mexico.  We have been getting ready to go, and she wanted to leave sooner than I was able to.  I'm still waiting for the renewal of my truck registration. 

 

This is the San Xavier Mission just south of where we're camped.  It's very impressive, but still being restored. 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of our sunsets consist of a beautiful glow in the western sky.  One night we got some storm clouds to make things interesting.  The first is actually opposite of the sunset, but we still get color there.

 

 

 

 

This is a shot the day before full moon.  We have a very interesting backdrop of rocks with some nests that we think are hawks, but we never saw them close enough and when we had the binoculars out, they were shy.