Walking in Tombstone

Day 7

We weren't murdered in our beds, the car wasn't stolen and the air conditioning was working in the morning, so we were off to Tombstone. We tried to take in the ghost town on the way, but the ghosts weren't available on Sunday morning without an appointment. Stupid ghosts.

We're actually a full day behind schedule already. When camping, it takes at least two hours to eat, shower, and break camp each morning. All the gear has to be slide puzzled back into the car. (Can you use slide puzzle as a verb? Too late.) Setting up camp and making dinner in the dark is against our new travel rules, so we have to cut our driving short at both ends. Gas stops, rest stops, scenic stops and lunch eat up another couple of hours, so we're falling behind every day. We have some slack days built in, so we will hopefully still get to see all that we planned for.

Tombstone sits in high desert, so it's still cool and pleasant in early summer. Erosion and changes in altitude made the southwestern scenery change drastically every few hours on the drive. On the way south we saw the strangest arrangement of stacked boulders, like giant river rocks, just placed n top of each other, as if a child had been building shapes out of them. The terrain near Tombstone is filled with scrub bushes and mountains horse shoe the town, coming right up to the south side where the silver mining operations used to be.

Tombstone's only current industry is tourism. I'm told the OK Corral is the 2nd most visited place in Arizona, after the Grand Canyon. The whole town is a wild west show. It reminds me of my renaissance festival days, except that the souvenirs are all reasonably priced. There's an art gallery next to the corral, so I'll be looking to make contact with the owner later.

At the Corral they have a multi-media show narrated by Vincent Price (apparently taking Sunday off from the ghost town. Stupid Vincent Price.) There's a museum there with old buggies, a hearse, and a fire wagon (they used baking soda and acid to build pressure for the water, sort of like a super soaker. I did not know that...) After telling one of the guys there that I did historical illustration, he pointed out some neat features of the displays.

An unexpected element of the museum was having to explain to Sean what a "soiled dove" was. Highly educational place...


We caught the shoot 'em up show there, which culminates in the Earps and Clantons going at it. Lot's of killings--it was a fun family outing. The corral property includes the old alley near Freemont and 3rd where the gunfight actually occurred, complete with mannequins of the participants. We also caught the Epitaph museum (The Epitaph was the Republican, pro-Earp town newspaper, whose war of words with the democratic, pro-cowboy Nugget, the county paper, helped make the OK Corral shooting the subject of regional controversy and western legend.

Town politics haven't become less heated over the years. While we grabbed lunch, the restaurant owner was outlining her plans to run against incumbent Dusty Escapule for Mayor. She was clearly not happy with affairs in the town.

As the sun set in the west, we headed over to Kartchner Caverns. There was another border patrol checkpoint --we're very close to Mexico now--but this one is made more exciting by the Garmin telling us to make repeated U turns in front of the officers at the checkpoint. What a lively sense of humor that machine is developing! Crazy Gringos must not be on the watch list, so after a stop for hotdogs, we madeit to the park. We didn't visit the caverns, having just come from Carlsbad, but the park was very nice. Little mice danced outside of our lantern light, and a harvest moon hung over head. A much nicer place to stay than a motel.

Adios!