Wow, has it really been a whole year already?
All it means really, is that my life is hum-drum.
Nothing to look at here! Please go home.
Okay, I do have something that I want to post, not only to share with anyone who might interested (anybody?), but also to record my memories (for myself) while they are still fresh in my mind. We came home from our trip three weeks ago and already some things are getting fuzzy.
Every year up until now we always went to WI to visit my mom. But since she passed away last October, we feel that we are free now to go anywhere we want. There is still so much of the United States that we haven't seen yet! So this year we decided to go to the "Desert Southwest" (Arizona and New Mexico). There are so many interesting sights to see there with stunning scenery that, in my opinion, even rivals Alaska scenery in some places. But also, there are numerous historical places to visit too, which is what I am always interested in.
I was debating if I wanted to post the whole trip in one post, or divide it up. If I condense it all into one post, a lot will be skipped, even though it would end up being very long, and chances are I will lose my one-body audience. If I divide it up, like I did with our Hawaii trip, it is much more easier to manage, but I tend to get too chatty (and boring) and will still probably lose my one-body audience. So I will just please myself I guess, and play it by ear, and if you get bored, no offense taken if you don't stick with me.
This is already getting too chatty, isn't it?
Here we go!
We decided to fly to Phoenix, make a big loop, and fly back out of Phoenix, which worked really well. So we took the red-eye flight, got to Phoenix on Monday morning (Apr 22nd), and immediately drove south towards our first destination: Tombstone.
We arrived there in the afternoon so we had plenty of time to walk around in the historic downtown. You know what happened there!
This is the actual street where it all happened. Ignore that banner. It's just a reminder that they do a reenactment of the gunfight every day, which we missed cuz we got there too late.
They have this historical district closed off to traffic, but it is all open for pedestrians to walk around. It was weird that hardly no one else was there, which was kinda nice (one of the advantages of going there early in the season). All of these old buildings are now tourist shops (of course!). There was a fire after the famous gunfight, so these buildings are not the actual buildings when the gunfight took place; however they are still very old, built in the 1880's just a few years after the fight. If I remember right, the fight took place in 1881, and the fire happened in 1882. I could be wrong on that. The only original building that survived the fire was this theater/saloon. So, chances are good that Wyatt Earp was in this very building.
On the inside, it's a museum now. But if you look towards the top of the picture you can see the balcony where acts were performed (see the curtain on the side?)
Here is a skinny staircase that leads up to the balcony.
The lady that worked there told us that there were actually 16 gunfights that took place there, and this is a picture of the original bar. She pointed out some bullet holes that are still in it. Nowadays it serves as a checkout place for buying touristy souvenirs.
This original picture also has a bullet hole in it.
Anyhoo, it was really interesting to go in there. I wasn't interested in the touristy stuff they were trying to sell; I was more trying to soak up the building itself, and imagining what it must've been like in there back in its heyday.
The whole street is lined with historical plaques that you can read that are very interesting. I knew that the buildings, even though very old, came after the event of the famous gunfight, but it was still interesting to be walking around where it all happened, and just knowing that those famous people once walked that same street.
You get the idea. You can spend a lot of time just reading all the plaques.
It was getting really hot out that day and we were getting thirsty and hungry so we found a place to buy a big salad and ate it in a small park. Then we found an ice cream shop that had some non-dairy sherbert. Then we went to our B&B.
It was just a little cabin that was next a trailer park. It was pretty cozy and nice and clean inside. When we first got there, I felt that Chuck parked too close to that tree for my comfort. But that's because when I first got there I was so paranoid of spiders. I knew that we were in "spider country" (especially tarantulas), and I thought I would see one behind every corner. I made Chuck enter everything first before me (especially bathrooms), so he could check for them. It took me several days to relax, thanks to the fact that I never saw one, but my eyes were still always scanning for them.
After we got settled in our cabin, we went went for another walk in the area, this time in the neighborhood, and looked at some old houses that dated back to the original Tombstone days of the 1880's. And we took the time to admire some big cactuses that grew everywhere and the flowers that grew on them. The foliage landscape there sure is different than what I'm used to!
So that was our first day, and since it is so time consuming to get pictures loaded on here, I will stop here and continue next time with Day 2.
