On Monday, Emory's wife, Karen, met us to go touring all day! We started with a famous art gallery Dennis recommended we see.
Ettore 'Ted' DeGrazia, born in 1909, built his
Gallery in the Sun on a 10 acre spot in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains northeast of Tucson. He opened the structure in 1965, built of adobe bricks crafted on-site. It is now a gallery to his artwork and includes thousands of his original oil paintings, watercolors, ceramics and sculptures.
DeGrazia painted colorful pictures of native peoples from the Sonoran desert and many of his pieces feature children or animals. We walked around the gallery and took in six different collections of his work, each focused around a subject of particular interest to him.
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Mission in the Sun
at the DeGrazia Studio |
Outside the studio, the campus around the gallery offers picnic tables under traditional ramadas (a cross between a lean-to and a carport made of old sticks), as well as two other beautiful adobe buildings. One of them has been used for visiting artists' collections since his death in 1982, but was formerly DeGrazia's little gallery before he built the larger one. The other is the Mission in the Sun, built in 1952, in honor of
Father Kino, a Jesuit priest who established 27 missions in present-day Arizona and northern Mexico beginning in 1692. Kino was loved by the Pima Indians of the region because he was a kind and caring man of peace who brought an uncommon humanity to them despite the harsh Spanish rule of the day. The little chapel has rock floors, an open ceiling and thick adobe walls adorned with DeGrazia's paintings.
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| Pat's Chili Dogs in Tucson |
From there, we headed to lunch at another Tucson institution...
Pat's Chili Dogs. This place is a bare-bones drive-in lunch counter, doing a swift cash-only business since 1967. They offer chili dogs and french fries and very little else. We ordered the family pack: 4 chili dogs and a box of fries the size of a shoebox (well, almost that big). The dogs were very tasty. Ken went for the two spicy ones and Karen and I each had a mild dog. Yum. The fresh-cut, skin-on fries were great for the first few inches, but as they cooled off, they congealed into a big lump. Heart attack in a bag...so good.
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Dome ceiling of
Mission San Xavier |
After lunch we drove down to the
Mission San Xavier del Bac, established by
Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, in honor of whom DeGrazia had built his little chapel. The San Xavier Mission (locally pronounced san-uh-VEER) was founded in 1692, though the current church wasn't built until 1783.
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| Mission San Xavier del Bac |
The church continues to serve local parishioners and much of the church has been restored. It is absolutely beautiful and is also known as the
White Dove of the Desert. The interior of the chapel is extremely ornate with elaborate carvings and sculptures in the three altar sections at the front.
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| Ruins of the Tumacacori Mission |
We continued on to
Tumacacori, another mission established by
Father Kino, though we found this one in sad shape compared to the San Xavier Mission. Founded in 1691 and abandoned in 1848, Tumacacori saw years of difficulty and hardship. After frequent attacks by Apaches, relentless disease, encroaching settlers and lack of governmental support, only 100 Indians remained at the mission by 1786. By 1828, when Mexico ordered all Spanish-born residents to leave the country, the last resident Franciscan priest left. The remaining Indians and a few settlers hung on for 20 more years, but the harsh 1848 winter finally drove them out.
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| Old Mortuary Chapel in the graveyard of Tumacacori |
Subsequently, Tumacacori's graveyard, once the site of over 500 graves with a mortuary chapel in the center, was used as a cattle pen. All the graves were destroyed. The mission's main chapel's wood-beamed ceiling was pilfered to build local homes, exposing the once beautifully painted interior to 60 years of weather and neglect until it was taken over by the
National Park Service in 1916. The bell tower was never completed. We found the grounds of the church filled with workers and construction cones building sidewalks for visitors, and though there are no plans for restoration of any of the buildings, a roof was added to the chapel to prevent further weather damage.
After visiting the missions, we headed to the
Desert Diamond Casino for some debauchery to round out our day at the churches. Just kidding. We met Dennis, Karen, Emory, and Dennis' dad, Andy, for dinner at the seafood buffet there. We all enjoyed the all-you-can-eat crab legs, a whole host of other seafood items and waaaay too much dessert. It was great!
What a fantastic day touring with Karen!
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