So, for the second part of this blog, I'll pick up where I left off. Rocks. More rocks. I love rocks.
A quick potty stop at and a couple of photos Slide Rock State Park and we're back on the road to Phoenix.
Oops. Rogue train photos.
After Phoenix we had to wait for Dave and Mary to get home from Disneyland so we grabbed dinner at the Cracker Barrel and headed for Tombstone, home of the Showdown at OK Corral. Bob got hung up in the Cracker Barrel gift shop looking at little girl stuff he though the baby might "need".
Sombrero rock in the sunset.
The sun setting on the saguaro cactus gives them a pretty glow as well.
Beautiful evening clouds swirl over saguaro cactus silhouetted on the horizon.
Another sunset.
A pretty mountain view of a pretty rock formation somewhere between somewhere and somewhere. Like I said. These pictures are out of order.
This is not a northwest landscape.
I stole some cactus fruit from the barrel cactus. When I used to live in the desert I would eat these raw, my grandmother would bread and fry them, or make jelly out of them. The little bitty seeds are very nutritious and hard to pick out of your teeth.
We made our way to the lovely town of Tombstone and parked by this abandoned train in back of town.
As with any tourist town, gaudy attractions abound. This is a reenactment of the "showdown at OK corral". No trip to Tombstone is valid without this.
Bob resting at the jailhouse. He wouldn't get inside the jail for a picture. I think he was afraid I'd pay to have him locked in and run off without him.
The bad guys that were killed at OK Corral were displayed in a shop window on Main Street. Here I'm just on display, not dead.
Tourism at it's hokey best.
Note Bob is always walking ahead of me and doesn't even notice if I stop to take a photo.
The Tombstone City Hall.
The Tombstone Fire Station #1.
After Tombstone we zipped down the road a bit further to visit the town of Bisbee, made possible by the wealth of the copper mines. This is one of the original breweries in Brewery Gulch where over 200 breweries and bars (and other entertainment) waited to greet the sore and disillusioned miners each day.
We stayed at the Copper Queen Hotel. It was built with copper money at the inception of the town. This hotel was like stepping into a time warp and was so easy to imagine the women in their finery staying at this hotel.
This hotel has also been on TV many times for it's reputation for being haunted.
This is the front desk. A picture in the lobby looks just like the original. I just wanted to stand around and soak up the ambiance.
We had the John Wayne suite. John Wayne stayed in this very room when he was filming a movie. The windows looked out over downtown Bisbee.
And John Wayne looked over us like some sort of creeper.
Beautiful downtown Bisbee.
Bisbee is built in a canyon near where the copper deposits were found and the houses go up both sides of the canyon.
This means there were lots of stairs. So many in fact that Bisbee hosts the Bisbee 1000 Annual Great Stair Climb. that attracts thousands of people each year.
Good bye Bisbee. I really liked visiting.
After we left Bisbee, we headed for Mary and Dave's house in Tucson. They graciously offered up their beautiful desert home and packed us around to see the sights and experience Tucson at it's finest. One of our stops was Saguaro National Park.
At Saguaro National Park we hiked up to some hieroglyphics (or are they petroglyphs?) that archaeologists have apparently determined were mindless doodles of bored sentinels that were posted on this peak to watch their village. Once on this hill, you can see for miles.
A close up of the "doodles". And that's exactly what they look like.
This overlook was one of our stops on the way back to Mary and Dave's home.
A windy road ensures that Kyanne will never be going to this lookout.
A cholla cactus.
The dark cactus in the background looks dead but is actually very much alive.
General desert scenery.
This ocotillo cactus will plump up and look completely different after a rain. Notice the blooms beginning at the very top of each "branch".
The ocotillo is a nasty wicked cactus but the colors are pretty. The natives use to use it as a support "studs" for their stucco walled huts.
Mary and Dave's house from the desert.
Look at the delicate pink blooms I can't remember the names of. Blooms are so delicate in the desert.
A prickly pear cactus in the background and a beaver tail in the foreground.
...again.
A pink beaver tail cactus.
The view from Mary and Dave's backyard as we sat outside.
Beyond their fence.
Bob loving his photo taken with a saguaro.
The view from our backyard hike.
The very dangerous "Hiking Gang" stopping to rest at a lookout point.
View from the rocks above.
Washingtonians in the desert.
The Cook's took us to Old Tucson. I thought Old Tucson was the old area where Tucson originated. I did not know it was a very interesting area where hundreds of western movies had been filmed. Movies like Cimmaron, El Dorado, McLintock, Have Gun Will Travel, Death Valley Days, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, and The Three Amigos just to name a few.
There is a set for every type of western building needed
and it all makes for a pleasing and educational education.
No western setting is complete without a gunfight.
This is the mighty Rio Lobo from the movie of the same name starring the aforementioned John Wayne.
This old train has been in many movies.
The perfect ruins to have a gun battle with the natives. The fence posts are set into pipes so they can easily be removed for filming.
This is the very same staircase that Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke descended at the most opportune, and sometimes most inopportune of times.
I will close the desert portion of our trip with a cute little cactus.
We arrived back at the airport and parked the car in the rental return parking spot with exactly 1.000 miles on the brand new car we headed out with. We couldn't do that again if we tried. Notice the tank is on "E". This is a good thing since we prepaid a tank of gas as we rented the car.
And a few hours later we were landing on home turf. It was a great trip, but now it's back to the reality of work, home and hearth.
Have a good week everyone!
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