Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Fourth installment of my Trip to Mexico!

And I think there's like 25 pictures I want to share with you yet, so be sure to look all the way to the bottom!

After we left Magdalena we headed South again to Santa Ana,  Sonora, Mexico.  Most of the road is being worked on the entire way.  And most of the time there were 2 lanes, one going south and one going north.  But in a few places they were done with their road work and there were 2 lanes going each way.  Those were very nice.  The roads through the towns was the worse part of the trip, we hit lots of pot holes and some of them were teeth jarring pot holes!  We continued to follow Father, at breakneck speeds it seemed!

 Like I said before, Our Lady of Guadalupe is VERY VERY popular in Mexico.
The picture above is on the side of a small mountain! 
 This is looking to the West as we are traveling South. 
Mexico is a stunningly beautiful country.
 Welcome to Santa Ana
 I thought this was interesting, a broken image of Our Lady of Guadalupe
in the back of a business on the side of the train tracks.

 This is Saint Mary of Guadalupe Church.  And it's beautiful!
The front from the side.
 The back of the church from the side.
 Aren't those towers stunning?
 Intricately carved wooden doors.
I'm sure this is Juan Diego who was visited by
the apparition of Our Lady at Guadalupe.
 And this is the other door with Our Lady of Guadalupe on it.
These doors are big beautiful and heavy and in great shape.
 As you enter the church, there are on either side, the confessionals.
 This is the altar.  The picture of Our Lady up at the top. 
Then the Tabernacle (where the host, or body of Jesus, is keps
is that big gold thing above the altar.  You get to the tabernacle by going
up some stairs behind the altar.
 I love the altar, with the picture of the Last Supper on it.
 One of the stained glass windows from the dome.
 A huge cross with our Lord Crucified on it.
 A statue of Mary with the baby Jesus and several more statues.
I believe the big statue has cloth on it, Fr. Manolo said it's very common
for statues in Mexico to be dressed in actual clothing that's been specially
made by seamstresses. 
 I thought this was a very cool statue.  It's God the Father with 
Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit.  I love it!
 An up close view of the Tabernacle.  It's probably one of the biggest and
the most beautiful ones I have ever seen in my life!
 There are 2 sets of stained glass in the dome, and these are the one
at the very  very top of the dome.

 This is the lower set of stained glass in the dome.  So beautiful.

 One more picture of one of the doors.
 As we came into the church, there was a room to the right and several
lovely stained glass windows.
 Not sure what this is, but it was as we were leaving and heading north again.  With
all those steps, I was glad that Fr. Manolo didn't want to take us up there!
 Some more of the glorious Mexican scenery!
 Saguaro Cactus, tons of it!
 We saw several of these.  It says Precaution Car School on the back.
So I'm not sure if it means that's the name of a driving school, or
if it means, "be careful these people are learning to drive" or what!
 A long set of steps to get up to this small chapel.
 Another small chapel with many steps.  Can you tell that these
fascinated me?
 Here we were back in Nogales, Sonora and this window in a house just
was so cute!  A tulip window!
And AT LAST we are headed back into the Good old US of A.
That's Fr. Manolo's car in front of us.  It was so good to be
home!  It was a pleasure to visit and I can't wait to go back again!

After we crossed the border we stopped at a restaurant (I haven't a clue what the name of this place was!) and had some dinner.  The food was great, I had Chili Rellenos and they were tastey!  I wanted to have a beer with them, but I was driving the last leg home (125 miles) and I didn't want to stop to potty! 
There was the most beautiful full moon out that night, it gave us great pleasure to watch it come up as we made our way home!

And yes, I did find my wallet when I got home.  Sitting on my table where I had left it EARLY in the morning!  And were my dogs glad to see me!  They had eaten at the horrible hour of 7am that morning, and 
I didn't get home until going on 11.  So they were hungry!
Rudy was so glad to see me that he refused to go potty until I had spent 10 minutes loving on him.  He just wanted to be loved.  I think he thought that he had been abandoned!  

I thought I'd sleep really well that night, but I didn't and I wasn't worth much the next day!!  But it was fun and I'd do it again in a heart beat.  :)

That's it, I hope you enjoyed my trip!

God Bless, Anne

8 comments:

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

The pictures are stunning. I was also interested in that caution car school sign meant!,

glen

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

The pictures are stunning. I was also interested in that caution car school sign meant!,

glen

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

The pictures are stunning. I was also interested in that caution car school sign meant!,

glen

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

The pictures are stunning. I was also interested in that caution car school sign meant!,

glen

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

The pictures are stunning. I was also interested in that caution car school sign meant!,

glen

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

The pictures are stunning. I was also interested in that caution car school sign meant!,

glen

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

The pictures are stunning. I was also interested in that caution car school sign meant!,

glen

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

Oh my