Willcox, Arizona

Friday, February 14, 2014

Well, Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone and Happy Birthday to our son-in-law Dusty. Wednesday, we drove to Willcox, Arizona to finish our vehicle inspections. The St David Zone was meeting together in Willcox so we felt it was a good opportunity to inspect all of  the vehicles in the zone. As we arrived in Willcox, we once again ran into our mission president. If you remember from last week’s  post, we bumped into he and Sister Killpack in the visitor center at the Mesa Temple. I guess they were at the Willcox meeting to conduct interviews with the missionaries. We completed our inspections and decided to take a little time to see the sights in Willcox. Now, if you are not familiar with this small town of about 3,900 residents, it seems that it is home to the oldest store in Arizona, or so they claim. 

Arizona's oldest store, open Thur, Fri, Saturday

Historic Downtown Willcox

It is also the birthplace of Rex Allen and they have a museum for him here. It started as a railroad town and I suppose it has not grown too much since then. It is named after a general named Wilcox, who stopped here for a short visit. The town council voted years later to change the spelling to Willcox,

Museum

Elder H and Rex Allen, forgot my mandolin

Huge Tree in Railroad Park, Historic Willcox (note railroad to right comes through town)

I do not know why. We did have lunch in a railroad car restaurant named the Big Tex BBQ. The food was really quite good and the atmosphere quaint.

The Restaurant

The Smoker next to Big Tex BBQ

Inside the Big Tex BBQ Retaurant

This trip was probably the highpoint of our week. It has been a slow week. We will be leaving for Utah on Monday to attend the wedding of our daughter Amy. Needless to say, we are really excited about that. We plan to try to drive all the way to Kim’s place on Monday, if the weather is good and if I can hold up to drive that far. We will then plan to travel to Logan to visit Grandma Jane and Linda on Tuesday. We will return to meet Christian’s parents on Wednesday. The wedding is on Saturday at 9:40AM in the Salt Lake Temple with a luncheon and reception to follow in the evening. After church on Sunday, we will start our journey back to Sierra Vista to resume our duties.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

We had a good day today. We got to meet a new soldier who has arrived. One of the soldiers who got engaged over the holidays had his fiance there today as she is visiting for the weekend. We also said goodbye to the wife and daughters that we were just getting to know. Their husband/father is graduating March 6 and we will be gone until just before graduation and the wife is driving to California to visit family this week. It is joyful and sad to see the soldiers that we have gotten to know and love graduate and leave. We are so happy for them, but we will miss them. Well, we are packing up tonight and plan to leave early tomorrow for Utah. Hope to see many of you soon. To the rest, we will post again when  we get time.