I’m a big Mission fan. (No, not The Missions!) The oldest Spanish missions in the current USA were built in Florida, Georgia & Carolina. But they were made of perishable materials & mostly exist as archaeological sites. The New Mexico missions are the oldest ones still standing. The earliest Texas missions were built near El Paso by refugees from the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Most Texas missions were roughly contemporary with San Xavier–which was originally built by the Jesuits. Most of the other missions were Franciscan-built.
California was missionized a bit later (although there’s a some overlap.) I’ve only visited Mission Dolores in San Francisco’s Mission District (duh!) Out there, they tend to be knocked over by earthquakes. And sometimes rebuilt fancier than they were originally.
San Xavier del Bac is a beautiful place, which I’d love to visit. I don’t know whether your kids would like it. But I enjoyed visiting the missions in San Antonio as a child. (Like San Xavier, they are still active churches–not just museums.)
Take a ride up Mt. Lemon. I enjoyed that as a kid. My uncle made breakfast up there. It’s not much compared to some larger mountains, but hey…it’s a mountain!
Mexico is only like 50 miles away, as I recall. You can zip over the border and do some touristo stuff.
Isn’t Mt. Lemmon still mostly burned out? I haven’t kept track of its rehabilitation.
For dinner with the kids, try going down University Boulevard. There are lots of cheap/midrange restaurants (catering to students, obviously). I’m sure you could find something good there.
If you can find an eegee’s, get a grinder, hot, and a strawberry/lemon eegee. That’s a very kid-friendly place, and it’s a Tucson-based chain. A very short chain, mind you.
So we did the Rincon Market for lunch. Very nice selection, good quality of food. Perfect for a lunch hit.
For dinner, I went to El Charro Cafe on Kolb and Sunrise. I must say I was rather disappointed. The carne seca was described in various articles as unique and hard to find outside of Mexico, but when I had it, it had to me a very familiar taste indeed: it tasted a lot like the dried pork traditionally eaten with rice porridge (congee) as part of a Traditional Chinese Breakfast. Which needless to say, is not traditionally eaten rolled in a tortilla which cheese and refried beans on the side.
But the carne asada at Cafe Poca Cosa totally blew me away, and I discovered a delicious and reasonably nutritious local “fast food” joint (El Pollo Loco) when my kids were asking for McDonald’s, so so far the food in Tucson is still scoring well above expectations! Even the tamales served at the cafeteria at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum scored an average-plus in my book.
Activity-wise, we went up Mt. Lemmon today to about 5 miles short of Summerhaven. It was really cool, literally, as it went from about 60F at street level in Tucson to just above freezing, 34F, where we turned around. Beautiful though. We hiked around near some of the trail heads and vistas in the morning before my wife had to give her talk at U of A.
I visited Trail Dust Town on Tanque Verde, which was mentioned as a good place to spend a few hours with the kids, but just about everything there was shut down. Apparently late Jan is “off season” for Tucson. What’s not clear to me is when the season is – other places seem to shut down for July and August or something, when it’s probably searingly hot.
Instead we spent most of the afternoon playing mini-golf and arcade games at the fun center next door to the Trail Dust Town.
Tomorrow, we’ll try to hit the Air/Space Museum and maybe the science center. If the night time is clear we can try the observatory.
Hey, we sell Arizona Gunslinger here at the World Market I work at, so maybe if there’s one near you, they’ll have it too. I could actually find out for you too, if you wanted. We have a big store roster thingy with every store’s number.
So I spent most of the day at Old Tucson after all. And actually had a very good time there! It was pretty much what I expected, and better done than other “Old West” themed setups I’ve been to in the past. Having the mountains around Tucson in the background instead of, say, the woods of suburban New Jersey or roller coasters and a water park really enhanced the Old West feeling
Oh, and one more thing: can anybody tell me what’s the deal with all the Ron Paul political signs, stickers and placards? I feel like I’ve fallen into a weird parallel universe where Ron Paul is, like, getting more than 10% of just the Republican votes. And isn’t McCain a Senator from Arizona?
When my wife and I passed through Tucson on our honeymoon road-trip, we stayed at the Ghost Ranch Lodge. It was really cool, but obviously on the decline; the restaurant was permanently closed, for one thing. But it was neat; instead of a room, you get a little cottage to stay in, with a patio and a small yard; a gate at the back of our yard opened into a gorgeous cactus garden.
And it’s got some history. Georgia O’Keeffe used to stay there and paint; in fact, she apparently created the place’s logo. Also, as we were packing up to leave, an older black gentleman came up to us and said he’d seen our Shelby County (i.e., Memphis) license plates and wanted to introduce himself. He said he was Al Green’s brother Myron (or Byron, I forget). He said he stays there part of the year to get away from Memphis and write.
Hmm, now that I look around some more, it looks like the place may be out of business. Bummer. I found this photo, though, which is pretty neat.
I don’t know if I’ve noticed that it’s in business or not, but I have to take my recycling this weekend, and I think I drive past it to get there - I’ll take a gander from the road and see if it looks open or not.
And robardin, the Ron Paul signs are kind of freaky - they’re all over the place! I’m glad you’re enjoying your visit!
Which needless to say, is not traditionally eaten rolled in a tortilla which cheese and refried beans on the side.