Desert Days

This week has just flown by and I’ve just realised I’ve not updated the blog, so this is gonna be a long one!

Last Saturday, we drove over to Bisbee, the plan, such as it was, was to take a walk around the town and have lunch. But, the best laid plans and all that. When we arrived there was a classic car show in town. The cars climbed high up Tombstone Canyon and were all highly polished with some of the engines steam cleaned to a mirror finish. I half expected the Fonz to appear and lay claim to this one.

Earl’s car was there but there was no sign of him, Randy, Joy or the Crabman.

And last but not least a good old British Mini.

Bisbee was pretty crowded so we decided to give up on lunch and headed home.

Sunday, we headed over to Tombstone for Founders Day, it was a great day there were street vendors, gunfights, illusionists, Tonhono O’Odham Dancers, a World Champion gunslinger and most of Tombstone was in period costume.

She really has to move fast to get out of the way of those blades!

One of the gunfights, this was one called the ‘Killing of Margarita’ Margarita was a saloon girl, killed by a jealous wife.

Tohono O’Odham basket dancers.

I don’t think this prospector is going to hit the mother lode riding up and down Allen Street.

The Tombstone take on a carousel, isn’t it cute?

Joey Dillon world famous gunslinger.

Founders Day was fun, but really hard work, so we headed over to the Longhorn Restaurant for lunch and frozen margaritas!

Monday we took a walk around Fairbank ghost town.

Fairbank is on the San Pedro river and was once the home of the Grand Central Mill which was used to crush ore from the mines in Tombstone. The mill used the water from the San Pedro in the ore crushing process and it was then transported to Benson by rail. The disused railroad bed is still there, but the tracks are long gone, it is now used for hiking, cycling and riding it is also a major route for drug smugglers and illegal aliens! Needless to say it is regularly patrolled by Border Patrol officers.

All that remains of the mill are the back walls leading up the side of the hill.

A disused mine shaft just off the trail. This one is fenced off, but it makes you wonder how many others are hidden under the brush.

We continued on down the trail until we came to Willow Wash. Willow Wash is huge and leads down to the San Pedro.

After mooching around the river for a while, we retraced our steps and took the river loop trail back to Fairbank.

The river loop trail winds back to Fairbank on a bluff above the river, there are some great views, the snow covered Huachuca mountains were easily seen from this spot.

Not long after we’d taken this photograph, just below us sitting by the river we saw a lone guy wearing a straw cowboy hat with a large plastic water jug slung across his back. We’ve been told that illegal aliens use large plastic water jugs. Hmmm! We stopped and looked at each other, it might just be another hiker, but just in case it wasn't we decided to get the heck out of Dodge, fast! I’ve never walked that trail quite so fast before.

Arriving back in Fairbank, we sat on one of the picnic benches discussing what we'd seen when along walked the guy from the river. Turns out he’s a local and when we saw him his dog was swimming in the river. Mind you had he been facing us, we’d’ve flown along that trail even faster, as on one hip he was wearing a holstered .357 magnum, (shades of Dirty Harry!) and on the other hip a rather large hunting knife!

After all that excitement we came home and felt so much better after a couple of beers!

As for the rest of the week, well, the weather has continued to be gorgeous, sunshine, blue skies and temperatures in the 80’s, so we’ve spent a lot of time ‘planning’ obviously this involves a lot of sitting around in the sunshine.

Have fun, we are!