A Journal, with Pictures

Joyce and I took off ear­ly on Feb­ru­ary 17 on our way to meet 43 oth­er  mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annu­al COPA Mex­i­co Adven­ture. Since we had to cross the coun­try we planned to stop in Hous­ton and vis­it our friends Clark and Julie Black­man and Chris­tine Roms­dahl. We made a fuel stop in Fair Hope, Alaba­ma then dodged some storms to arrive at KCXO, Lone Star Exec­u­tive air­port. We had a great vis­it and din­ner and launched for El Paso where we spent the night before leav­ing for our first Mex­i­co stop Ciu­dad Obre­gon. We cleared cus­toms, refu­eled, then flew the last 25 min­utes to Alam­os where the 22 COPA Cir­rus air­craft gath­ered. We stayed at a incred­i­bly charm­ing resort and spa, Hacien­da de Los San­tos. The vil­lage was clean and safe as well as charm­ing. Alam­os was the north­ern most sil­ver city and gen­er­at­ed enor­mous wealth. The resort is made up of four of the for­mer sil­ver barons man­sions put togeth­er to cre­ate a unique place. The sec­ond day some flew over the Cop­per Canyon in the morn­ing and oth­ers explored the resort and vil­lage. The founder of the resort,Jim Swickard still acts as host at times since he is a pilot and caters to fly­ing groups. He also owns the air­port and was kind enough to give us a per­son­al tour of the vil­lage. The gath­er­ing was great as peo­ple arrived they con­gre­gat­ed for lunch and then in the tequi­la bar, where there were old friends met and new friends intro­duced. Over the two days of our stay there was lots of time to social­ize, explore this beau­ti­ful place and soak up the unique his­to­ry. The hos­pi­tal­i­ty, food and drink were excel­lent and the only regret was we could­n’t stay longer.