A Day trip through Superior, down to Winkleman, and Oracle and back through Globe

Doug and I decided it was time for the 2 of us to go on a day trip by ourselves so we decided to do the day trip up to Superior, south all the way down to Oracle just north of Tucson and then back up through the mountains to Globe and then west to home. It was a gorgeous sunny day and we left home about 0830 after I had been to my 0700 hr water aerobics and then had breakfast. We packed a lunch to have a picnic along the way and off we went! It has been about 3 years since we did this drive and then we didn't go as far south as Oracle so we were looking forward to the day

 

 This is the Ray Copper mine south of Superior. We were really interested to see how it had changed since we had last seen it. The colours in the rock were fabulous

 We were amazed at how much more of the mountain was now excavated

 Every where you looked there were terraces with huge trucks rumbling along

 We could have stood there forever watching it was so interesting

 It was well worth the drive just too see this part of it

Doug this picture of me at the visiters view point at the Ray Mine

 

We drove into every little town just to have a look. Most of the little settlements were old mining towns that we almost ghost towns now. The roads were dirt and the villages very poor as most of the mines are closed now. We found this little cemetery close to the road among the trees and scrubs so did some exploring. There was the Copper Canyon Railroad tracks close by so not sure if this cemetery was for railroad people or for people that had lived in the area when mining was active

Obviously people still visit the grave sites as there were lots of plastic flowers at a lot of the sites. Stones were spread around grave sites to identify a grave.

 

 This grave site had a cement trim around it. Definitely not a cemetery that has been maintained by anyone!

After I took this picture and looked at it, it looks like Doug is doing something he shouldn't be in a cemetery but really.....he was just ducking under some branches as we walked along

This must have been someone important as it was the nicest headstone in the cemetery. It didn't say what the person did on the headstone s we can only surmise. We then drove through the towns of Kearny, Winkleman, and San Manuel, stopping at all their little thrift stores always on the look-out for good deals. Our last stop of the day was the town of Oracle before we heading back up and over the mountains into Globe

 

 This was a beautiful old stone church in Oracle.

 It was hard to bet a good picture as the sun was in the wrong direction. You can see some snow still on the grass by the stairs. The elevation was in the 3000ft level so they had recently had a snow fall

 This is a better picture of the old church, very lovely with the little bell on the top

This is just a picture of the geography around Oracle. Very much scrub desert with hills in the background. We had a lovely drive ending up stopping to have dinner in Gold Canyon at the Red Sage restaurant. Since it was the day before Valentine's, that was my treat from Doug!