We had breakfast at the hotel and then headed for Bruce's brother
Mark's
house in Vail, AZ, which is just southeast of Tucson. We stayed with
Mark and his daughter Robin on one of our earlier trips.
At the rest stop near the Gila river, we saw a sign that commemorated the
Gadsden Purchase, which accounted for about a quarter of Arizona and
part of new Mexico.
As we were driving through western Arizona, we saw a number of solar
panel farms along the side of the highway. I think this one had motors to
point them at the sun. This picture was taken around noon, so the
panels are pretty much horizontal.
Bruce's brother and niece, Mark and Robin, fixed a delicious dinner of encrusted chicken and
ham topped with a tomato based sauce. There was also pasta with another
tomato based sauce and a green salad.
On our previous trips we have taken a picture of the odometer at
the end of the each day to show how far we travelled that day. This was the
first time we did so. This shows that Ashland to Menlo Park to Beaumont
to Vail is a total of 1321 miles. We'll try to remember to take pictures
every day for the rest of the trip.
