Our Trip to Green Valley - Arizona that is!

  Gerry and Lydia Vander Wel met, married and spent many years in Clarkson and we knew them at Clarkson Christian Reformed Church. They were transferred to Saudia Arabia many years ago and then spent several years in Seattle, Washington. For the past 8 years they have been in Atlanta, Georgia. Gerry works for AT&T. Last year, they bought a winter home in Green Valley, Arizona, about 20 minutes south of Tucson. They plan to spend more time there after Gerry retires in 2 years time. We learned that they would be at their home for 2 weeks in March and made plans to visit them. Their home has a lovely view of the nearby mountains and the backyard overlooks a ravine with several holes of the golf course.

They are finishing work on their backyard patio during this visit - it will include a fountain and a corner BBQ and fireplace.

After a tour of their home, we drove about 15 miles north to the ASARCO  Copper Mine to take a tour of the mining operation there.  The mine began in 1899 with a mine shaft like this but modern day methods now look like this -

  It is now a huge open pit mining operation. The concentration of copper is 0.5% ore and it is still worthwhile to mine and smelt the copper. Along with the copper ore comes small amounts of gold and that is sold and provides enough money to pay the electric bills for the company - hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
The pit is 1500' deep - where they have hit ground water. The earth is blown up by dynamite and the rock is loaded onto these trucks - they seen small from a distance but are massively huge!

This is one of the teeth of that huge "digger" that loads the rock onto the trucks.

The rock is ground to small pebbles.

Inside these large drums (a ball mill), it is ground to ever smaller particles by steel balls - first a 6 inch ball and later a smaller balls grind it even smaller.

Then the powder is mixed with water and other chemicals (one is pine tar) to make a slurry that the copper adheres to and the other metals fall to the bottom.

The "tailings" of rock are returned to terraced hillsides and eventually desert plants are grown again.

Jack shows us how big those tires of the transporter trucks really are!

After a warm afternoon (the temperatures hit 93F - but it is dry and there was a breeze), we are ready to sit on the Vander Wel's shaded patio and share some wine and munchies.  We found that we had lots to talk about and shared a lovely dinner and stayed up til late talking about everything under the sun - including our grandchildren  :-)  We stayed overnight and had a great breakfast (Thanks, Gerry) and said our "Good byes" and "See you again next year"

  Instead of driving directly home - and following the same route that we had taken to Green Valley - as typical for the Jagts, we headed EAST  in I - 10 and exited at Willcox, then drove north on Route 191 to Safford. We passed these mountains that still had snow on their peaks despite temperatures in the nineties!

  While we were driving, we saw this hillside in the distance - at first we thought it was yellow rock but on closer inspection, it was a hill COVERED  with yellow poppies!! We have been waiting for the spring wildflowers to appear and this was a spectacular display!

Passing Roosevelt Lake, we saw this lovely red rock shoreline.


We arrived home in Mesa about 4pm after another day of exploring and a great visit with old friends.