It was with mixed feelings that we left Yuma on New Year’s Eve. Yuma has a way of stealing hearts. We enjoyed the people we met and we made some long lasting friendships, including church kids Samantha, Richard and Charles who were given new bikes for Christmas. Doug had been looking at the map and planning the next chapter of our travel since the middle of December. Grass doesn’t grow! But it was nice to be on the move again to explore and see.
As we moved east to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument the desert continued to enchant. Organ Pipe Cactus Park is the only place in the USA where the Organ Pipe Cactus grows wild. We camped and hiked among giant Saguaro and Organ Pipe, Prickly Pear and the 28 other types of cacti. It really is an enchanted forest. The park also boasts of 6 different kinds of rattlesnakes – but they were all nestled in for a long winter’s nap! There is an old copper and silver mine there. We met the daughter of a geologist who gave us some tips on rock collecting around the mine. (Glenda got attacked by a baby cholla cactus and it stuck to her leg like a porcupine. I couldn’t help but laugh!)
Border Patrol was heavy in the area – the Mexican border was just a couple of miles away. On the way to Tucson the mountains are spectacular. There was snow on the side of the road. Tucson is home to Davis-Monthan AFB which is the graveyard for retired Air Force aircraft. We saw thousands of planes in their final resting place. We are boondocking again and we both have reading headlamps. lol
I (G) was told I needed a crown. Finally, some recognition! Ok, so it was just the dentist and he was talking about a back tooth that had broken a couple of days prior. I don’t know if that is standard advise to travelers (we are at their mercy), but he told me it wasn’t serious and could wait until I got home to get it seen to. Hope he is right.
Tombstone was our next place of interest. It is a town in the middle of nowhere. Tombstone is usually thought of as a cowboy town, but it is really a mining town. A prospector named Ed Schieffelin was also a US government scout and in 1877 while on a scouting expedition he would go off on his own looking for rocks. A friend told him that he would only find his own tombstone because of the dangers in the wilderness. Instead he found a huge silver deposit and he named his stake Tombstone. Thus began the influx of people. In its heyday in the 1880’s the population was anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people. Its prosperity brought an unsavory element as well – 100 saloons were soon in business with gambling, prostitution and lawlessness. That is where “The Cowboys” come in. It was a gang of more than 100 men lead by the Clanton family, a precursor to the “Mob”, that ruled the area. They robbed trains, stagecoaches and stole livestock at will and instilled fear in the populace. Lawmen were paid off and looked the other way.
Many of the Wyatt Earp family were part of the community. Wyatt came to Tombstone to become a businessman and make money. He had a troubled past but had made a name for himself both as a lawman and gambler while he was deputy marshall in Dodge City. He became the bouncer at the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, securing 25% of its gambling profits. His brother Virgil was Town Marshall and his other brother Morgan a deputy. Eventually Wyatt became a deputy as well. They should not be confused with the corrupt lawmen, as there were territorial marshalls and a town sherrif. And I am unsure of the hierarchy. Suffice to say that a feud had grown between The Cowboys and the Earps, which resulted in the gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881. 3 Cowboys died and 2 Earps were injured.
Wyatt and Doc Holliday spent a couple of weeks in jail while the gunfight was investigated. They were exonerated. The story is an interesting one and the real events dispel the myths of the men involved. (Glenda took a fancy to Billy Clanton from the showdown at the OK Corral.)
Boot Hill Cemetery is an interesting land mark in Tombstone. It is called Boot Hill because many of the people buried there died with their boots on, usually violently. Most of the cemetery has been restored to its original condition – more than 250 wooden headstones with the person’s name (48 were unknown), the date and means of death – over half were either shot, murdered or hanged. There is a Jewish memorial just outside of the cemetery where Jewish people and Indians are buried. They didn’t want to be buried in Boot Hill.
Tourism keeps Tombstone alive with many reenactments of the OK Corral gunfight throughout each day, mine tours and souvenir shops. Its town motto is “the town too tough to die.” It was known as the wickedest city in the West.
Ben had given us a book called Road Food, detailing places in the US that serve really good food. We have used it a few times and El Durron restaurant in Douglas AZ was mentioned . It serves Mexican fare. The menu board was in Spanish so we asked the counter attendant (Javi) to explain. We don’t know why there are tacos, burritos, tostados, enchiladas, etc – maybe it has to do with how the tortilla is folded. Anyway we wanted a burro. But there were 4 different ones. Javi explained – chicken, pork, beef and when we asked about the last one, he simply said, “guts”. Ah…No! We chose one that combined pork and beef. It lived up to its rating in the book. Javi was thrilled that his humble place made it into a Road Food book.
We stopped at Apache in eastern Arizona and saw the memorial of Geronimo’s surrender. The victors get to write the history, but the memoir of Geronimo that Doug read told a somewhat different story. The place is empty and the nearby Chiricahua Mountains make for a beautiful and eerie ambiance.
We boondocked at Scenic View Rest Area in Las Cruces NM. It overlooks the city and the night lights were pretty. At the Rest Area is a huge sculpture of a roadrunner made out of junk. Someone with a wild imagination fashioned it together with crutches, computer and electronic parts, household items, fencing, wires. Its underside is made of running shoes nailed all together. Its eyes are VW headlights. It’s pretty creative. The next day we wandered around the old part of town that showed off its architectural Spanish influence.
On top of Organ Mtn just east of Las Cruces the Tularosa Basin stretched out below us. We descended to the desert floor with a distant wall of mountain on each side of us. Almost to Alamogordo resides White Sands Missile Range. During WWII land owners handed their land over to the government for use. It is the perfect spot for testing. It is so perfect that the government refused to give the land back after the war was over. Hard feelings still exist they say. We explored the New Mexico Museum of Space History – 4 floors of space exploration details. Lots of heady stuff! We learned that missile and rocket history goes as far back as Napoleon – he used rockets in the battle of Waterloo! Who knew?
We took note of the crashed V2 rocket on the grounds. It was Werner Von Braun and his German team who developed this rocket that Hitler used to bomb London. The technology of intricate gyroscopes and accelerometers was so advanced it is still used today, along with the rocket technology developed by American Robert Goddard. V2 rockets were built and tested after the war at White Sands and were the progenitors of modern NASA rocketry. When I (D) was young these scientists and astronauts of NASA were modern heroes. We plan to be in Cape Canaveral in late February and hope to see a rocket launch.
Texas looms before us as we hope for warmer temperatures. And it feels good to be heading east.
Let's Do The 180! 