November into December 2018

November was a relatively quiet month for us- we did some stuff around the house, and our daughter Jess came to visit for a few days.

That was actually pretty "exciting".
She had never been to the Desert Bar but had been hearing about it for ages, so we decided to take the Teryx there, using the back trail. Sadly, as you can see from the picture, we tipped it over.

Luckily no one was hurt and we continued on our way to the bar for lunch.
















After that excitement, things calmed down for a week or so.  As Thanksgiving approached we realized that other than Jess, we wouldn't be having any company for the holiday. That's unusual, and we got to thinking that there was no point in staying home if that was the case.

We threw out some ideas of where to go, and landed on Joshua Tree National Park.  Jess had never been there, it is only about 2 hours from her and about 3 from us. So, we packed up the trailer and took off.

We had cooked the turkey before we left, and decided to have our family's traditional Thanksgiving dinner- Turkey Enchiladas. We had a great day and had even found a spot in an RV resort with 4 pools and 6 hot tubs!







Joshua Tree National Park is obviously named for the unusual Joshua Trees that live inside the park- but I think its misnamed.

It should be called Boulder Park because the real fun of the park is climbing all over the boulders!

Joshua Tree is a small park and isn't as well known as some other parks, so it never dawned on us that it would be so popular the day after Thanksgiving!  We waited in line for over an hour and a half just to get into the park!

 We decided we might as well wait it out, even though we knew that parking would be an issue. Instead of parking at the hiking trails, which was our original idea, we parked along the roadway and explored the boulders nearby.













It wasn't exactly the outing we had hoped for, but we had a great time, and got to show Jess at least a little bit of the park.







Once Jess left for home, we had no intention of doing the same. Since we were out and about already, we kept going.

Our next stop was El Paso, to check in on Paul's mom.  Since it was a two day drive, we broke the trip up with a stop in Tucson, where we met up with our friends Dave and Nancy.

 After a couple of days with Paul's mom, we headed for our next destination- Bisbee, Arizona.











Our objective was to tour the copper Queen Mine.  We have toured quite a few mines in the past...so many that I could probably have passed on this one, but off we went.

After donning our hard hats, we boarded a small train that took us 1500 feet into the mine.

The tour was actually very interesting, and was conducted by someone who used to work for the mining company.

When I think I am going to be bored, I try to pay attention and find one or two bits of information I can come away with on a tour. I wasn't at all bored on this tour, but still, my favorite take-away was how they would use dynamite to blow an area into rubble. They set an ever increasing circle of dynamite sticks, and connect them together with fuses.
When they are done, they light it and walk around the corner. They don't have to go too far, because the way it is set off, it implodes, instead of exploding. They also needed to stay nearby so they could count the explosions and make sure there wasn't a misfire.

Once we were back on the surface, we drove past the mine on our way to our next destination.










Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has been on our bucket list for quite a while, and we finally made it there. This national monument is in southern Arizona and shares a border with Mexico.
Pictured is the Organ Pipe Cactus that it is named for.








Our plan was a simple one. Relax, explore, relax some more. And that's what we did. There are two scenic drives- we drove both of them. There are numerous hiking trails.... and most had incredible views.....

At night the weather was perfect for sitting by a campfire watching the sun set.

Once we had had our fill, we headed back home.

And yes, I am on a mission.

Tombstone and Bisbee, AZ

Wednesday was a "Twofer"- we managed to make it to both Tombstone and Bisbee, but only because we didn't spend too much time in Bisbee.  We packed a lunch to bring with us since the weather was awesome- in the low 70s and sunny. We went to Tombstone first, and the town did look like you would expect an old western town to look, complete with Stagecoaches. Tombstone was named by Ed  Schieffelin , who set out to look for gold in this area, an area that was known to have Apaches and rattlesnakes.  People told him that all he would find out here would be his tombstone. He discovered silver instead of gold, but he named his claim "tombstone".

     As soon as we arrived we bought tickets to see the "Shootout at the OK Corral", which, by the way, did not take place at the OK Corral- it took place down the street from it.  I didn't fully remember how the story went, but basically Virgil Earp was the town policeman in 1881,, and he deputized his two brothers and Doc Holiday when he heard that the McLaury and Clanton brothers were in town to stir up trouble. In the few minutes that the gunfight took, over thirty shots were fired- both of the McLaury brothers were dead, along with Billy Clanton.  Ike Clanton was supposedly unarmed and ran away.  The show was ok, but too long as far as we were concerned (25 minutes). Once it was over, we walked back to the truck to eat lunch, then headed to the Good Enough Silver Mine for a tour.

I have no idea how anyone could look at silver in its natural form and think it has any value! The process they used to extract the silver from the ore  involved using mercury. It was a long (and unhealthy) process that began with them essentially smashing the rock into sand size pieces. The whole process was only effective in removing about 60% of the silver- it wasn't until much later that it was discovered that by using cyanide instead of mercury, about 90% of the silver could be extracted. In fact, when they discovered that, they went back to the waste product and re-processed it to extract more silver.

I was curious as to how similar the mining life was here, as compared to the coal mining back in PA.  There was very little similarity actually.  The silver miners were highly skilled and respected,  and some of the highest paid workers in the area. They made $4 a day, whereas a cowboy would only have made $25 a month. Our tour guide informed us that no one had ever died working in that mine- a far cry from the coal mining life.

Later in the afternoon we headed to Bisbee AZ.  Bisbee is an old copper mining town.  The town was literally built into the side of the mountains.  When we drove the streets, all of the side streets were really steep offshoots of the main street. Between the houses there were steep staircases up to the level behind.

It was a nice town but we got the feeling of "been there, done that" in the sense that all of the stores seemed to be the same thing we have seen everywhere else.  We did stop at the abandoned (as of 1975) open pit copper mine, just outside town.  Its absolutely a huge hole in the earth.

Today we drove out to Kartchner Caverns State Park. This is a very young state park- its only about 10 years old, but it has an interesting history.  In the 1970s, two avid cavers discovered an absolutely beautiful cavern.  For a year they explored it without saying anything to anyone.  They finally approached the owners of the land (the Kartchner family) to let them know what they had found, and managed to convince them that it was important to keep the cavern's existence a secret.  They had seen the damage that had been done to other caves, not just from vandalism, but just from basic human contact, and didn't want that to happen to this beautiful cavern. For 14 years, the landowners worked with the state of Arizona, in secret, to sell the land to the state and turn it into a state park, racing to get it done before the public found out about the cave.  They were finally successful, and the result is that no damage has been done to the cave and it remains in pristine condition. The state used state of the art technology to put in walkways (built inside plastic bubbles, to protect the cave from dust during construction) and get it ready for the public.
I can't say I know from first hand experience that the cave is beautiful, because I elected not to take the tour.  I have been to several caves/caverns, and I am not a happy person when I am underground.  Paul did go on a tour and he said that compared to Mammoth Cave, it was obvious that it was in much better condition-there was no grafiti, no soot, no broken stalagtites, etc.  In fact, the tour of this cave is so state of the art, that people are put through a mister on the way in, to dampen all of the lint on their clothing, so that it doesn't fall off into the cave. While Paul toured, I soaked in the sun, and once he was out, we hiked the 2.5 mile Foothills loop trail, which was good exercise, fun, and had nice views  but wasn't really unique in any way.

This evening we sat outside for a bit with a very confused and frustrated cat.  Last night while we sat outside with the cat, within a 30 minute span, 3 rabbits approached us, and therefore, him.  I have no idea why these rabbits thought it would be ok to wander within 10 feet of a CAT, but apparently they thought it was no big deal. Dozer had a great time stalking them, but I guess he knew he'd never catch them because he only tried to pounce once.  The rest of the time he just stalked them, belly to the ground!  He waited and waited tonight, but no bunnies showed up, so he was very disappointed.

Tomorrow we leave here, maybe headed to Silver City, NM.