BISBEE, TOMBSTONE AND TUCSON DOG SHOW

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We realised we would probably like Bisbee when we were greeted by a sign that said “KEEP BISBEE WEIRD” and it surely is.





The town was a wealthy copper mining town in the 1890s and has evolved into a place where aging hippies run businesses extolling the benefits of Reduce Reuse Recycle and try and sell you magazines from the 1980’s. Coffee, pottery, and vegetarian shops compete with a shop selling laser cut sculpture based on skulls. I liked this one but would need to keep it in the garden to avoid nightmares.
Bisbee is also famous for "the Lavender Pit", one of the more famous of the American mines because Bisbee turquoise (also known as "Bisbee Blue" registered name) was one of the first put onto the market. The turquoise mine is part of the Bisbee copper mine The Copper Queen now operated as a tourist underground tour . Bisbee turquoise has developed a reputation as a hard, finely webbed or dendrite, high blue stone, known for its "chocolate brown" matrix. Bisbee Turquoise also comes in a beautiful dark green color.
While we were looking around the rock shops and jewelers stores at the amazing minerals around we heard tales of the legendary rockhound ‘Bisbee Bob’. Apparently he had the best examples of turquoise and other local gems and mostly collected at the dead on night from other peoples mines. They ran him out of town!

CAROL’S BIT.
Bisbee reminds me of the West country, Devon and Cornwall. Lot of odd shops with all sorts of different things for sale, and “odd” people, who are quite happy to admit they are odd. My feeling is that they are like those in the west country , normal, it’s everyone else who isn’t. We came here last year,and business was slow then, it still is, but is was nice to see that the same people have survived and are still trading. I did well in a jewelry shop that had a sale on silver, 70% off.

The place was packed, but the cat on the counter didn’t budge. Several shops had dogs in, as part of the welcoming committee. The shops are run by their owners, who bring their pets into work.
This is one of the places I wouldn’t mind staying for a while.


TOMBSTONE
"The Town too Tough to Die," Another of Arizona's old mining camps. When a miner named his first claim “The Tombstone” and rumors of rich strikes made a boomtown of the settlement that adopted this name. In only 7 years the mines produced millions of dollars in silver and gold but rising underground waters closed them.
Days of lawlessness and violence, climaxed with the infamous Earp-Clanton battle, fought near the rear entrance of the O.K. Corral, on October 26, 1881 and recreated several times a day for us tourists.
We were enjoying our walk up the historic main street avoiding the ‘Shady Ladies Side’ when we came across this.

CAROL’S BIT
I think John has overdone the diet bit, don’t you?


I didn’t realize this thing moved every so often, there was nearly another corpse in Tombstone.



TUCSON DOG SHOW
This was all about finding homes for shelter dogs but we were not sure about this breed spotted in the food queue





CAROL’S BIT.
America is very good at these types of events. They often take the shelter dogs out to the public to try to place them in homes. There are so many of them though, and seems to be so little control of the breeding. I saw one hybrid of a Pyrenean mountain dog crossed with something half it’s normal size. The result was hideous, the legs were half the size of a pure breed, but the body wasn’t a lot different.
It would be nice to think that most of these dogs were placed by the end of the day. Fortunately there were no White German Shepherds looking for a home, although there is a rescue for them in America.


As we were leaving we came across a group In regalia, dancing. We think they were probably Mayan, judging by their clothes.






After we left the dog show, John took me for a birthday meal at Mimi’s, which has become one of our favourite places, the weather was hot all day, so all in all, a good day.