Arizona

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Tombstone, AZ

I am really into the history of the Wild West and the characters that inhabited it. So you would think that visiting Tombstone was a must for me. Not in the least. Afraid of a tourist trap, even copious numbers of people telling me to go there weren’t enough to make me believe that this iconic western town would be worth a detour. If it hadn’t been kinda sorta on the way to Nogales from Tucson, I would have definitely given it a pass.

I spent an enjoyable day there and do not regret going, but I feel that my initial misgivings stand. Lots of fun can be had in Tombstone and if you’re a history buff you’ll get your fill of artifacts, but if you want a more genuine-feeling Wild West town experience there are lots of better choices.

Before I get into my narrative about the day, I have to explain the lack of pictures. You can take as many pictures as you want in Tombstone of anything, but you cannot post anything about paid attractions online without express written permission, which is apparently difficult to get. So you’ll just have to take my word for a lot of this. 🙂

My first stop was the courthouse museum, admission $5. It was full of history about Tombstone and its colourful inhabitants.

Tombstone courthouse.

Tombstone courthouse.

I learned about the card game faro, the most popular game at the time, but which is now outlawed in the US because it gives the house a 67% chance of winning.

One of the more ghastly exhibits was a reconstruction of the gallows. I believe they are the second gallows I have ever seen (the first being in Ottawa!), and let’s just say they’re not nice to look at. 🙂

I learned about a Chinese man who was born in Virginia City, MT, where I was just recently, and the Chinese population of the town.

One exhibit that I found quite impressive was two large walls full of all sorts of different types of barbed wire. I didn’t realise that many exist!

The courthouse museum was a good start to my day. I then headed for Allen Street, the main kitschy touristy drag with a faux Western look (go to Dawson City for a more realistic one!) and lots of shops selling tchotkes.

Allen Street. I liked the Earps standing in the middle of the street. :)

Allen Street. I liked the Earps standing in the middle of the street. 🙂

I encountered a man who loves the outdoors and doesn’t let his physical disabilities stop him from going off the beaten path. Picture taken with permission!

Impressive wheelchair!

Impressive wheelchair!

My next stop was the Bird Cage Theatre, admission $10.

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This was a theatre/brothel/gambling hall/saloon that operated from 1881 to 1889 and has been preserved intact, one of the few original Tombstone buildings that survived the fires. Admission gives you all the time you want to wander the rooms. This was a wow experience for me. So much history, and preserved almost exactly as it was 125 years ago! I was able to use the incredible zoom feature in my camera to see details in the wallpaper of the viewing balconies and details of the ceiling.

The Bird Cage Theatre was totally worth the admission price also. Buoyed by my success thus far at avoiding tourist traps, I took the plunge and went to check out Big Nose Kate’s Saloon, named after Doc Holliday’s girlfriend. The saloon was once the Grand Hotel.

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The saloon was a little loud, but the music was good old classic country sung by a lively entertainer, so I decided to stay for a bit. I ordered a beer and perused the menu. The food was really inexpensive (!), so I decided to try their ‘Stampede’ burger, with cheese, bacon, and BBQ sauce. Surprise, the burger was excellent and they even made frozen fries taste good somehow! I tipped the server and singer generously, and still came out of there at less than $20 for a beer, lunch, and a show!

Before I left, I took the twisty stairs down to the basement into yet another shop so I could see the room of the man who did menial labour at the hotel and tunneled his way from his room into a silver mine in his downtime. Seriously!

Yup, my day was going well! So well, in fact, that I decided to jump into the tourist trap and buy a ticket to see a recreation of the OK Corral gunfight. I ponied up $10 and for that got to see the show, the OK Corral museum, the Tombstone history movie, and I got a free copy of a reproduction of the Tombstone Epitaph newspaper with the article about the shootout and subsequent inquest!

The gunfight show was amusing. The acting wasn’t great and I thought that it was hilarious that they cast an old guy to play Billy Clanton, who was 19 when he died at the hands of the Earps. What I got from the show was a better sense of the unvarnished truth about the fight and where it happened exactly. One of the most memorable parts of this whole part of the day was seeing the map Wyatt Earp drew in the 1920s showing what he remembered about the placement of people during the fight. He had bad handwriting!

The movie dated back to the 1950s and was narrated by Vincent Price! It was a little bizarre in that most of the action was in a diorama and occasionally a screen would come down to show reenactments of certain things. I learned a lot about the history of the town. The founder was told when he went to the area that he would only find his tombstone, hence the name he picked for the settlement!

I have to say that I find it distasteful that there’s a sign on Allen Street at the back of the corral saying that the fight happened there when the true location is on now super busy Fremont Street, several doors down from the corral. There’s a sign there, too, but I think a lot of people would miss it. I only knew to look for the spot because of my own knowledge of the event.

The real site of the OK Corral gunfight.

The real site of the OK Corral gunfight. There’s just a little sign next to Fly’s photography studio and boarding house.

I went to the actual fight site while munching on an ice cream, found for just $2 for a decent-sized cone. When I was done with that, I went to the Epitaph office to pick up my free paper. By the way, I love the name of that newspaper!

There is a free exhibit in the newspaper office about the man who founded it and quite a lot of history about his and Wyatt Earp’s connection to the Chilkoot Trail and the Klondike gold fields!

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My free paper would have cost me $3 and I would have bought one, so I really got my money’s worth out of that OK Corral show ticket!

My final stop of the day was the Boothill Cemetery. Access is free through yet another gift shop. I paid the $3 to get the booklet that gives info about all the graves.

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Billy Clanton's grave.

Billy Clanton’s grave.

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I was surprised to find Tombstone to be relatively inexpensive and good value if you spend your money carefully. I never once felt that I was paying a ‘Tombstone tax’, a premium just because of the location.

I’m glad I went to Tombstone and found the experience worthwhile, but this wasn’t a wow day for me at all. What I enjoyed most were the artifacts. I’d say the two best parts of the day were my first steps into the Bird Cage Theatre and seeing Wyatt Earp’s gunfight map!

Two pictures from the trip to Nogales:

This pest control's car was decorated like a mouse, complete with tail, whiskers, and ears!

This pest control’s car was decorated like a mouse, complete with tail, whiskers, and ears!

According to my GPS, Nogales is the end of the world!

According to my GPS, Nogales is the end of the world!

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Driving Through Saguaro National Park and Visiting the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

For this afternoon, I wanted an activity that would get me out of the truck (so not too far from Coolidge in the direction of Tucson), but which would still be outdoorsy. I found the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which sounded like the perfect way to wile away an afternoon. To get there, my GPS routed me through Saguaro National Park, a route I would have avoided had I not had my parks pass as it costs $10 to enter this park for a week. I pulled over a few times to enjoy the view of all those hills covered in one saguaro cactus after another. It looked positively like an alien landscape!

Later, at the museum, I asked someone there all my questions about the saguaros. First of all, the g has the Spanish pronunciation, so it is more like sa-wah-ro  than sa-gwa-ro. Next, the root system really interested me. The saguaros have a lot of roots, most of which are just below the surface and the radius of the roots equals the height of the cactus. So if you have a 10′ cactus, the roots extend 10′ all around it. The older the root, the more woody it is. The saguaros are firmly rooted, but sway in the wind. They get their first spear (arm) when they are about 75 to 100 years old and they live a long time!

The desert museum admission is just shy of $20 and you need at least two hours to see everything. I stayed 2.5 hours and that was just enough to view everything except hike the desert loop to the coyotes because it was just too dang out.  Anyway, I see coyotes all the time back home, so I decided to see the (indoor) snake exhibit a second time instead. 🙂

This museum is really a zoo and botanical garden. You get to see all the animals of the Sonoran desert as well as the plants, insects, and geology. It is beautifully laid out.

I arrived around 1:40 and was told to hoof it down to the rear of the site to catch the raptor show at 2:00. This was an incredible experience! Several types of trained raptors, including peregrine falcons, Harris’ hawks, and barn owls fly over and near the crowd. One hawk swooped so close to me that I had to duck! The show lasted a half hour and we learned about how these birds thrive in a desert environment.

After that, I just wandered the site with my map, looking at what was interesting, from the aviary to the big cat canyon, the mineral dump where I was able to find a treasure to take home to the hummingbird garden, the bee and butterfly habitats to the cactus garden, and more. There was lots and lots to see and plenty of cool buildings to duck into when I had enough of the unrelenting sun. There was also a conveniently located café selling ice cream at a reasonable price. 🙂

The museum takes good care of its guests by not only providing a lot of sources of good drinking water for refilling bottles, but also sunscreen in every bathroom!

My camera ran out after the black bear. I got some more pics with my iPhone, but I forgot to bring the transfer cable into the bunk with me. All you’re missing is pictures of prairie dogs, several rattlesnakes, and every more saguaro-covered hills. In other words, not much. 🙂

I learned so much today about this desert that extends as far north as B.C.’s Okanagan region. The saguaro-savvy staff member and I talked about about that and she explained that prickly pear-type cacti do well in colder climates, hence why we have them in Canada. She was surprised that we have them as far east as southern SK, though.

From the museum, I took a twisty road to Tucson, stopping along the way to soak in the view. It’s been another full rich day!

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Casa Grande Ruins National Monument

In 1998, I was fascinated (okay, obsessed) with Scottish medieval history and took a month to backpack around Scotland. In my world, the oldest ruins I could visit dated from the early 17th century. In Glasgow, I stepped into a cathedral that dated back to the 12th century. Weeks later, I walked through Cawdor Castle, built in the 14th century, and continually inhabited since.

I had absolutely no idea until today that sometime between the building of these structures, the ancient peoples of North America’s Sonoran desert were constructing equally impressive structures that would endure through the centuries. One of the most impressive remains of this civilization are the Casa Grande structure and surrounding village site, preserved as the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.

In one of the harshest environments in the world, these ancient people built the kind of civilization that existed all over the world at this time. Why am I so surprised to find such evidence in North America? The well-constructed buildings, impressive system of irrigation ditches, and beautiful artwork, in the form of jewellery, pottery, and weaving, point to a civilization that had evolve well beyond basic subsistence levels.

It is not known exactly what the Casa Grande structure was used for, perhaps as an administrative centre or food storage facility. It is so well constructed that no repairs or maintenance have needed to be done on the structure since it was deemed a protected site in the late 19th century!

This morning’s excursion to the Casa Grande ruins was a revelation. I’m thrilled that I took the detour!

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Cartoon Cacti!

Cacti in general are not an exotic plant to me, certainly not in the way palm trees still are. I mean, I can hike the hills around my property and see some. But the iconic, cartoony saguaro cactus? Now, that’s something as exotic to me as the palm tree!

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On the way into Phoenix yesterday, I saw ‘forests’ of them dotting the hillsides. I couldn’t believe how big they are. It wasn’t until I reached this morning’s destination that I finally had an opportunity to properly observe and photograph this amazing plant. The one in this picture most closely matches my mental image of the cactus, but I saw some that had no spears (‘branches’) at all and others that had dozens, if not hundreds, of them and were absolutely massive, bigger than a two-story house!

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Montezuma Castle National Monument

On the way to Phoenix tonight from Sedona, I stopped at the Montezuma Castle National Monument. Name for the Aztec ruler, even though there is no connection, this is an apartment-type complex carved out of the hills. It was built 1,000 years ago by people now called the Sinagua (for the Sierra Sin Agua mountains), who farmed the valley below, and eventually abandoned the site. To put this place into an historical context, it was built sometime in the middle to the end of Europe’s Middle Ages.

Until the 1950s, you could actually climb up and explore the ruins, but today you have to stand below and gaze up in awe while walking a short loop. Admission is $5 unless you have an interagency pass. 🙂

Of all the information panels, the one that struck me the most said that while the structure was made solidly and there were obvious signs of maintenance and repair, it was ultimately designed to be returned to the Earth when it was no longer needed. How many more of these structures existed, but have left no trace?

There was a nice diorama showing a cross-section of the complex. It really is built like a castle, complete with a fortified keep.

This site was amazing and I wish I had more time to write about it, but the Starbucks is about to close. I invite you to follow the link at the beginning of the post to get more information.