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.

TUCSON

After feeling a little overcautious because we stayed put in Coolidge after a snow warning on the weather forecast on what turned out to be a sunny day we went to the Biosphere 2 site just North of Tucson.




We visited the site of the famous experiment where 8 people got locked inside this giant closed system greenhouse in the hope that they could grow their own food while the greenery was producing enough oxygen to keep them alive.

In most peoples recollections the experiment was a failure as the inhabitants fell out and the oxygen production failed to keep pace with the consumption and I have to say that was my picture of the place, another glorious failure. However the excellent docent who took us round made me think other wise. They found out about lots of things and the “ BIG SCIENCE” experimental facilities they used are still in use today allowing macro research in a closed and controlled environment.

The giant diaphragms made using Hypalon, rubber dinghy material, were impressive as was the huge under floor pumping and air conditioning setup that allowed the scientists to produce whatever environment they wanted, be it mangrove forest or savannah or Sonoran desert. They even have a boojum cactus growing tall in one corner.

Coming out of the airlock caused the roof to come down.

Oh Yes it turns out that we were not overcautious about the snow. They had had lots the day before!

We visited Sabino Canyon a desert oasis in the Catalina foothills. We took the hike from the trailhead down to the river.
It was steeper than expected and required a bit of scrambling at the end due to erosion damage but worthwhile.

We spotted this unusual rock formation




Snoopy and Woodstock again.









The walk back down to the Trek was a pleasant downhill stroll but we were passed by earnest runners in IRONMAN T shirts on their way up and down the 4 mile access route. We had taken the shuttle up!

We found a noisy little RV park in the middle of Tucson for the night.



As I was connecting up the Trek to the utilities we were visited by the park cat who hopped in, checked us out, mooched a meal and then asked politely to be let out.



Wanna buy a Fat ALbert cheap mister?


Well as we left Tucson we came across this giant unwanted military aircraft parking lot. Several hundred Fat Alberts [ AKA Lockheed C-130 Hercules ] rows and rows of Warthogs plus many others. I suppose it is all part of the peace dividend.





We are off down to Tombstone and Bisbee again as we did not allow enough time last year to see everything.

Quartzsite and Casa Grande

We joined the wave of RVs that hit Quartzsite during the months of January and February, swelling the population from a few thousand to over a million.
At this time of the year, 2,000 vendors of rocks, gems, minerals, fossils and everything else imaginable create one of the world's largest open air flea markets in Quartzsite.

Eight major gem and mineral shows
as well as vendors of raw and handcrafted merchandise peddle their wares to snowbirds, collectors and the odd stray Brit like us.





But there is the car show as well.

People trailer their beautifully restored classic and spend two days sitting behind it making sure people do not touch while answering the same foolish questions over and over again.


Not every thing was a conventional classic and I liked this old time truck with it’s working likker still and animated talking doll beside it.





We came away with some unusual
semi precious stones and now have to work out what to do with them.


CAROL'S BIT.

I have always wanted a good piece of Amber a lot of the stuff you see is a sort of resin made up to look like Amber. This piece has a lot of dead bodies in it, flies, spiders and a few unidentifiable ones. This stone will cut and file easily, but I will probably put a bell cap on it, so that a chain can be attached.
The green stone is FUKITE it glitters and seems to be made up of several layers. I have left this as it is and had a hole drilled. The silver Bale that you see will fit through the hole.

The Red and Cream piece is MOUKAITE - Australian Jasper. It would make a nice back drop for a picture of Charro.

The torqouise and red is CHRYSOELL and CUPRITE - Senoran Desert. These make nice pieces on their own on a stand.

Those little rocks are IRON PYRITE - fools gold. This rock grinds easily into granules and could be used to fill in the faults in the MOUKAITE to add interest.

John has some flat pieces of AGATE and TIGERS EYE which he intends to use as inlay in the table on the boat.

The prices of this stuff was amazing, and I guess people come from worldwide to stock up and take back to their own country, to sell at a big profit. I have seen some of the large geods at alternative medicine shows that cost thousands of pounds. I can imagine what Harrod's would charge. You could get hooked on making things or just displaying what comes out of the earth naturally , and drive yourself nuts looking for it.




So far we have avoided becoming rockhounds but we are looking down and are starting to pick up interesting looking rocks. I am told that the next step is to buy a bag of marbles and every time we pick up a rock we should leave a marble. When we have lost all our marbles then we can call ourselves rockhounds.

After Quartzsite we moved to Casa Grande then on to Coolidge where the Casa Grande ruins are. Confused? We certainly were!

We joined a ranger lead tour of the ruins.

Anyway we already knew a bit about the Hohokam and their irrigation based culture but much of what he said was new to us,
Casa Grande is four stories high and about 60 feet long and 40 feet wide. All constructed from caliche a kind of desert hard pan mud. It is one of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America, its purpose remains as much a mystery as the people who built it.

This building was at the centre of a community of three to five thousand people and at the end of a complex canal system twenty miles long.

It was a giant undertaking with stone hammer and wooden digging stick as the canals were 70 feet wide and 18 feet deep in places.

We also discovered that they were small people.


Carol got through the doorway but I could not make it.





The ranger finished by telling us that the Hohokam lived in this area for a thousand years and had little impact on the land as they used renewable resources. He then asked us to look at all the dead trees in the back ground. He said that in the last 30 years deep well irrigation has dropped the water table in this area from 12 feet to more than 100 feet, out of range of the deepest tap roots!


We have to hang around this area because I have to go back for a stress test on my heart at the end of the month.

We get out of Dodge - well Phoenix actually!

I visited my cardiologist yesterday for my hospital follow up and got the all clear to travel.

I have been feeling pretty good since I got out of hospital and although panicking slightly at every chest twinge when we are out walking around local landmarks

and sweet factories. We were told this might just be my heart revelling in its new and improved blood supply.










I was feeling slightly miffed about all this as I had asked for a heart check up just before leaving the UK but found this;

“According to American Heart Association data, published 2004, for about 65% of men and 47% of women, the first symptom of cardiovascular disease is heart attack or sudden death (death within one hour of symptom onset). Yet the evidence is that stress tests, even if they were performed shortly prior to these events, would not detect that these events were about to happen for most of the individuals who were about to have events.” so you might still be at risk even after the best test!

Anyway we are back on the road and heading to Quartzsite today for a big classic car show and the mineral extravaganza that goes on at Q all the time.
Carol has always been interested in jewellery making and I had a look at lapidary while we were at the big park in December where they had specialist shops for working with stone.

I even made a clock, inlaying the hours with turquoise before polishing it flat. We might do something along these lines on the boat but who knows.

BRRR BRRR!!

Looking at the UK weather forecast you guys back home are in for an icy blast this weekend. Keep warm.

John and Carol [ enjoying the Arizona sunshine and preparing for the Super Bowl (me) and Puppy Bowl (Carol) ]

Before my helicopter trip we visited a quiet and peaceful state park just outside Phoenix

WHITE TANKS on JANUARY 6TH

We stayed at White Tanks State Park, the largest park in the system, for a couple of days. It was great to get away from the continuous traffic noise of Phoenix and enjoy the peace of a campsite out in the boonies.



In a place where annual rainfall is less than 10 inches a year and summer temperatures will be above 100o degrees for weeks, water is important. These mountains have been a reliable source of water to people for thousands of years.

We walked up to the site of one such source, marveling at the bone white rocks in the stream beds that give the park its name. The violent monsoon rains scrub the boulders clean and the gentle rains trickling down through the rock layers keep the top pools [or tanks ] fed year round. At first the stream bed was dry, even though we have had more rain than usual for this time of year, but soon we saw some small pools and then as we got to the top there we heard the trickle of running water from pool to pool and finally at the top we saw the drizzle of water running down the cliff face and filling the top pool.

It was a short hike and we were glad that there was something to see at the end of the trail but as we stood there at the pool, gray and dusty images flickered at the edges of our vision as thirsty travelers, from the past, in loin clothes or buckskins or denim flung themselves into the pool and drank deeply knowing that they would not die of thirst that day.

In hindsight the minor chest discomfort on the hike, which went away when I coughed up some mucus was in fact the start of my heart problem. The crushing chest pain I had always heard about was just not there. It was just like having a chest infction and a cough. Many other people in the area were reporting such infections.

I get to ride in a helicopter and visit the DynoRod man.

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It all got a bit exciting last Sunday. I had had what I thought was a chest infection for about a week and although I managed the White Tanks and the pioneer cemetery hikes plus changing house batteries on the Trek during the week it turns out I was 7 days into a heart attack.

Carol drove me to the hospital in Wickenburg where they too think, to begin with, I might have pneumonia but soon work out that I have blocked heart arteries and that I am in real trouble. They call the chopper ambulance and get the DynoRod team on stand by at the cardiac unit 70 miles away in Phoenix as they load me in to the chopper.

We land on the roof of the hospital and minutes later they are shoving a large tube into my groin. I do not know what tranquiliser they were feeding me but it was pretty good stuff because I felt pretty unconcerned about it all. They took care of two of my three obstructed arteries on Sunday then the other on Wednesday and I was discharged on Thursday with a big book on how to look after my heart.

The good folks at the Escapees Park helped Carol drive the Trek down to Phoenix and the hospital car park has a section for RVs with hook ups so she was able to stay there and walk over to visit every day.

We have to hang around near the hospital for a couple of weeks as my heart may get a little out of control with all this extra blood supply.

Carol has cleared the larder of all the bad stuff I used to eat like bacon and crisps and we went shopping for fat free and low salt groceries like celery and shredded wheat today.

I feel fine today and the sun is shining here in Phoenix so we will be out getting my exercise and thinking about what might have been. It was a close call. However the cardiac nurse who looked after me seems to think I should be able to get back to a normal life in a few weeks.

Agility dog show in Phoenix

AKC dog show.
Carol’s bit

The rules for AKC ( American kennel club) are a bit different to ours, and the ultimate goal is the Nationals as the British is Crufts.

This was agility, from basic level to some pretty serious experienced dogs.
Most of the dogs were border collies as usual, because without a doubt they are the fastest workers, not always the most accurate though. Going at that speed they can end up with injuries, and over shoot the object. The handler has to be one jump ahead all the time to point to the next challenge. Even so if the dog takes the corner too fast they can cause some pretty serious injury that may be permanent. Charro did basic agility and I decided it wasn’t worth the risk, he had perfect hips until the day he died, although an injury just chasing a ball, caused a permanent contracture in the groin muscle when he slipped and did the splits.

Although most of the dogs enjoy the excitement, some do not. These competitions can be about the handlers, and I saw a couple of them with dogs that made mistakes
walk a way from the dog in disgust, leaving the dog standing, wagging it’s tail, not knowing what it had done wrong. The dogs are under their handlers control, and they are responsible for the dog’s m
istakes.
Mostly though everyone seemed to enjoy the day and we were accepted as part of the day, even without a dog. There was a stall selling doggie things, always a big mistake going to look at these, the handlers buy things for their dogs, and the dog probably never even looks at most them.




One of the competitors ,Judy was in a turbo charged wheelchair
and took her border collie bitch Peek round the course faster than some of those on foot. Peek is a rescue dog and has very unusual markings for a border. She responded very well to the wheelchair and kept well out way of the wheels, I don’t see why an event for competitors that are disabled, shouldn’t be included as part of the agility programme here and throughout the dog agility world.

Thanks to Judy for her help in making us feel welcome and settling us in.