Derek arrived late on Friday, February 22 and we spent the weekend relaxing at the pool and making decisions about what he wanted to do over the next week while he was here with us. We had good weather - but we were coming off a day of rain and cooler temperatures so it took a couple of days to rebound into the 70s. But the skies are the most incredible blue here in the south west and that makes any day wonderful!
On Monday, we packed our bags and headed south to Tuscon. We plan to stay overnight and head home on Tuesday after we have seen some of the interesting sites in this area.
Old Tuscon Studios is an active movie lot. They have filmed movies here since John Wayne in the 1930s. It is built as a film lot and was never lived in but it is very realistic.
Derek loves to dress in his Indiana Jones leather jacket and hat and strike poses in this western town. We had fun with some of the props and poses.
We had fun doing these pictures - Derek has quite and imagination when he posed in various settings. They also had a gunfight re-enactment and an can-can girl dancing show.
We left Old Tuscon Studios after lunch and in enough time to drive the one hour trip east to Karchner Caverns. We had a reservation for the 3pm tour - the only way you can visit the caverns. Discovered by two amateur cavers in the late 1970s when they were exploring a hillside south of Benson, Arizona, the hole barely accommodated a man and was "exhaling" warm moist air. They went in and found these spectacular caverns that were still "alive". This means that the caves are still living and growing whereas many caverns have died and no longer are dripping water laced with calcite and forming new stalactites and stalagmites. Because they want to preserve these cave, one can only go by reservation in small groups led by a guide from the State Park system. You go through a series to air locks and are misted with a water spray to keep the lint down so none is released and left in the cave to cause contamination and leave bacteria that could kill the cave. The rooms were awesome and the long thin "soda straws" were sometimes 9 feet tall! The colours were wonderful and we were really impressed with the tour.
After the caverns, we drove another 30 miles to the town of Tombstone. We settled into our motel for the night after having dinner at the Longhorn Saloon. This building was the place where Virgil Earp was ambushed and shot from a balcony over looking the street below - at that time the saloon was called the "Bucket of Blood".
The next morning, after a good breakfast, we headed out and made our first stop - just a few hundred yards away - at Boothill Cemetary. We wandered around the old grave sites and found the one where the McLaury brothers and Frank Clancy were killed in the OK Corral by Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.
We saw a re-enactment of several of the gunfights in that lawless town of Tombstone in the 1880s. It was begun when silver was discovered in the area and miners and their exploiters arrived in droves to feed the miners and their baser instincts. Being a sheriff did not mean that you were above using your gun and coming to judgment before a jury could make a decision about who what right and who was wrong.
The Birdcage Saloon was one of the most infamous of the taverns in town. There are several little rooms along the second level overlooking the main floor with it's tables and the main stage where ladies did dances for money. These "cages" were like box seats with curtains and the "soiled doves" plied their trade here.
The bar has several of these bullet holes in it from some of the "incidents" in the saloon.
When this old fellow saw Derek in his leather coat and hat, he offered to lend Derek his gun and they pretended that Derek has holding him up for his poke of silver.
We had lunch at Big Nose Kate's Saloon - she was the girlfriend of Doc Holliday. The hamburgers came complete with a cowboy trio singing some of the lonesome songs of the west.
After that we drove about 35 miles to the old mining town of Bisbee. Built up the hillsides of the Mule Mountains, it was a booming town in the early 1900s when copper mining was made it a boom town. Now the open pit of the Lavender Mine is abandoned and the piles of tailings define the periphery of the town.
We found the cutest "motel" in Bisbee. The Shady Dell has rooms in old RVs. You rent the trailer for the night and it comes complete with the linens and bedding and you go to Dot's Diner in the morning for your breakfast.
After the mines closed, Bisbee became almost a ghost town. But in the past 15 years there has been a revival with lots of artists and artisans arriving and setting up shop. There are many coffee shops and craft stores in town and a fun place to just wander around. After taking the car up the steepest street, we had a good viewpoint to see the town sprawled up along the hillsides and tumbling (literally) down other hillsides.
But the day is ending and we must head for home in Mesa. It is a 3+ hour drive and it will be dark when we get back to the RV but we have had a grand tour of some of the interesting places in southeast Arizona.
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