Tucson – The Adventure

No visit to Arizona would be complete without a drive to Tucson, Arizona’s second largest city. With a population of ~1 million people, Tucson gets it’s name from the Spanish “Tucson” meaning “at the base of the black hill”. The hill being Sentinel Peak which is covered in basalt giving it a “black” color.

About a 2hr drive from Scottsdale so again, not too far but reasonable for a day-trip. One of the sites we wanted to visit, besides just seeing more of Arid-Zona was the Mission San Xavier. Mission San Xavier was founded in 1700 by Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino (no connection with the gambling game). This Spanish Catholic mission is visited by roughly 200,000 people each year and is considered to be one of the best examples of  Spanish Colonial architecture in the United States. The Mission is located about 10 miles outside of Tucson.

The nave

Tomb of Saint Francis Xavier

Not sure what’s up with the heads at the bottom of her dress

Restoration is not an easy task

After a short stop at the Mission, we headed downtown for lunch. Although Google Maps says there is an “old town”, we never found it. Instead we searched for restaurants and came upon “El Charro”. A Mexican restaurant in Tucson, never would have guessed.

Started off our culinary adventure with margaritas that were pretty much what you’d expect from any restaurant, a bit lacking in tequila. Not a bad thing, still needed to drive back to Scottsdale and with these Arizona drivers, we needed all the attention and care possible! Damn if these folks aren’t worse that California drivers, unbelievable! And the police as well!!! We were passed by tons of cars and semis in a 45mph construction zone and right in the middle was a highway patrol car!!! I guess speed limits here are more recommendations than law.

Anyway, back to lunch. While having our Margies, we enjoyed a bowl of hot, fresh tortilla chips with some really good red salsa, not too hot and not loaded with veggies! Ordered our meals, mine was a pork chimi with refried beans while Collette had chicken tamales. Both were  really pretty good and nice serving sizes.

So, still waiting for the meat of this post?  Well, that’s it! Sorry but our “adventure” to Tucson wasn’t very exciting. The Mission was neat, impressive architecture and murals, but for the parts of the city we saw, not much going on. I read that there is a university here but we didn’t visit that area, may have been more action there.

So, chalk up another road trip, been there – seen that for Arid-Zona. Almost forgot, the weather has been quite nice. Cooled off a bit, highs of around 90F during the day; 65F in the evening. Haven’t had the AC on for about 3 days now. Bad part is that the pool cooled off real quick. According to George Costanza, major shrinkage factor!

All for now. Going to head down to Old Town Scottsdale today, Carefree tomorrow so hopefully, more to report. Still have one more community to check, Verrado, so more on that later.

Cheers.