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Published: November 10th 2017
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Geo: 32.2215, -110.97
We left Las Cruces, NM and drove to Wilcox, AZ. It was picked as a stop because of the long drive. This is where Wyatt Earp's brother, Warren was killed at the Headquarters Saloon in 1900. We checked in to our hotel and drove down to Chiricahua National Monument. It is about 30 miles southeast of Wilcox. I don't think that they get many visitors there as they were quite happy to see us. It has a lot of hoodoos, like in Bryce, but not red in color, but tan. It was very interesting. I got my senior pass to the National Parks on this trip and have been using it a lot. The next morning, we headed for Kartchner Caverns State Park. We had made reservations to take a tour of the caverns in the morning. This cave is a living wet cave. That means that it is still growing inside. This is rare for caves. You can't take anything into the cave, including cameras. It was very cool.
Then we left for Tombstone. We had 2 nights at a B&B in Tombstone. When we got there we found the place. It was an RV park and
it had a mobile home that the owners split into to units. We had one side. It was quite rustic, not at all what I expected. When you flushed the toilet, you had no water pressure until the tank filled up. It was weird.
Anyway we went downtown and visited the Birdcage Theatre, which was the Theatre that the big name stars would play at. It also had a bordello in the basement, if you weren't interested in plays. The town was the largest town between San Francisco and St. Louis in the 1890's. After the silver mines closed, it almost died.
The next morning, we went down to the old courthouse for a tour. It has been restored to what it looked like in the 1890's. Then we went and watched a reenactment of the shootout at the OK Corral. It was pretty neat, if not actually historically accurate. We next visited the Fly Studio, the Historama, and took a trolley ride all thru town. Next we visited old Tombstone and saw another gunfight. We next went to the Rose Tree Museum, yes, the Rose Tree Museum and saw the largest Rose Tree in the world according to the
Guinness World Book of Records. It started from a cutting sent to the town from Scotland. See the photos to see how large it is. It covers more than 8,000 square feet. After that it was time for a beer at the Crystal Palace Saloon. We also had dinner there later.
The next morning, we left Tombstone and headed to Tucson. On the way we stopped at the Saguaro National Park. There are thousands of Saguaro cacti there, as well as many other types of cacti. Our next stop was the Mission San Xavier Del Bac. This is the longest running Mission in all of the U.S.. It is still being used as a house of worship every Sunday.
It was built in the late 1700's. After that we went to our B&B for the night. Tomorrow, we
head out to Phoenix for 2 nights and then the long drive home.
Stacy woke up with muscle spasms in her lower back yesterday. She is having a hard time getting around now. I think I might leave her here!
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Michele McGauvran
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This segment of the trip brought lots of great childhood memories. As a family we visited in the 70's. I have a picture somewhere of James, Scott and I sitting at the bar of the Crystal Palace hotel. Then 25 years later we all went back w
ith the Bakers. Thanks Bob and Stacy for making me smile and choke up a little bit. All for good.