Jan 24th to Feb 1st

Carol’s bit.

Went to Tombstone, the home of Wyatt Earp





I studied frontier history at school and often wondered what was fact and what was fiction. This is all fact.
The centre piece is the Birdcage saloon,
which was a theatre, bar, and bordello..
This is the only surviving building that is still intact, the rest of Tombstone main street has been reconstructed and turned into a shopping parade and tourist attraction.
The Birdcage has been turned into a museum, with a lot of original artefacts still there.
Lilley Langtrey performed here. (Apparently she is related to my ancesters from Scotland ,the McCallum clan.)






It was here that a famous poker game took place, it lasted 8 years, went on for 24hrs a day.




The woodwork is full of bullet holes and some of the bullets are still in the wood. One of the pictures (Little Egypt). also suffered the same fate, one of the punters decided to relocate her navel.
Further down the road is the house that Wyatt Earp and his long time girlfriend Sadie Jo lived in, she was one of the licenced working girls at the birdcage. This meant that she could only walk on the shaded side of the street by law. Hence the phrase " A shady lady".


The house has been renovated and is a showpiece with information about the couple and the history of Tombstone.
The main street has cowboys walking up and down, or riding,


and several stage coaches can be hired for a ride around the town.









There is a gun fight at the O.K corral
several times a day, and a tour to the silver mine. Several of the shops have historical information and artefacts, others are souvenir shops with a difference.
It was worth going to, and we will probably go back next year.

I have spoken to several people that have kept hybrid wolves, or pure bred wolves as pets, they all say the same, that they make very loyal and gentle pets. I suspect that the male wolves may not be predictable enough to keep, as at about two years old when they mature, they could become aggressive ,from what I gather from wolf conservation experts in England that run wolf conservation programmes. The people that I have spoken to over here, have had female wolves, although Shadow the hybrid Malamute was male, Huskies are more domesticated and he had a beautiful temperament, given the opportunity would love to be a lap dog.

John’s bit. We rumbled across southern New Mexico on the I-10 before getting into Arizona. After staying a night in a new State park called Kartchner we went to Tombstone as an afterthought because of Carol’s interest in frontier history and it was a great day out. We also visited Bisbee, just south of Tombstone and spent a happy morning wandering around the narrow twisting streets filled with antique shops and crafty little coffee houses before returning to Tombstone for another look at the shady ladies and the gunmen who paid 25 dollars a night for their company. That is the equivalent of 800 dollars today. Some one was making big bucks.

On Tuesday, I had a morning flying at the Catalina club in Tucson and am starting to dial in my new 3D model, the Yak. One thing that is hard to get used to with model clubs over here is that they are in the habit of flying early in the day to avoid the heat. It is OK just now but in summer when it is 100+F by midday, they will be at the field by 6.00am and gone by 10.30. We boondocked locally and were there early for us but people were already packing up as we arrived at 10.00am.

We had a quick tour of Saguaro National Park to see the famous cacti, which can be 200 years old, before heading to Colossal Cave Park run by Pima County. This park was an odd mix,
ranch, cave, campground, cafe and historical museum



















It is hard to see how they could justify keeping it open as there was almost no one staying there and when we got to the campgrounds we saw why. The only space allocated to 20 feet plus was up a very narrow twisty track which led to tiny sloping area with the promised water supply blocked off by boulders. Anyone needing water would have needed a very, very long hose.

We made it over to Quartzsite today and are off to explore the gem shows, craft shows and a custom car exhibition over the next few days. We are boondocking tonight in the Hi Jolly, Bureau of Land Management, free camping area. Charro has already been accosted by a local who wanted to know about his hips and his limp. Despite his limp he was pulling us along on his evening walk, obviously on the trail of something interesting and perhaps female. There is a 10 year old Akita a few campers away from us.

So far Arizona has impressed us and we are thinking about spending some or most of next winter here.