Tombstone Arizona

Tombstone Arizona is known as the town that would not die, and it's trying to maintain that example today. The main street for about 3 blocks and some other spots in town are clinging to the history to try and keep the town from finally dieing.

The Courthouse is a good place to start and they have turned it into a very well done museum. The town reached its pinnacle of riches and then faded, all within the short span of eight years. In 1877 silver was found and it brought over 12,000 people to the area. Over 37 million dollars worth of silver had been taken from the mines before they closed in 1886.

The courthouse stood empty from about 1931 until 1955 when it was restored and turned into a museum. It is a beautiful structure today and well maintained.

The courtroom on the second floor is completely redone and if you sit for a long time with your eyes closed you can hear the ghosts of some of the past trials.

The main street has been covered with dirt and you can still get a stagecoach ride around town and be able to listen to a taped explanation of what you are seeing.

Looking down the street where some of the good and bad guys have walked before us like Wyatt Earp, "Doc" Holliday, and John Slaughter.

The stores are well laid out trying to maintain a similarity of that period of time. You can pay your few dollars and go into the OK corral and see a re-creation of the big shoot out, which lasted all of 30 seconds. There is a very well-done description of the shoot-out at the OK Corral in the Courthouse Museum.

The Bird Cage Theatre I think is one of the few original buildings that date back to the 1800s. Most of the others have been lost over the years by fire. A lot of the original history is still intact inside this building.

Some of the people have been around for a long time also.

An interesting town, glad we got to see it.

To be continued...

Happy Anniversary Deb and Rich

March 17, 2001.
Happy anniversary to our my beautifull daughter, Debbie, and her husband, Rich. Here are just a few pictures that we keep on our computer of you guys. Hope your day is filled with lots of joy and you don't have to work. If you do please sneak off early (like noon) and have a enjoyable evening.

We miss you and love you both very much...


A beautiful bride and her groom.
Hav ing fun after a race...

A cold hike...

And Christmas past with Chugger..

Have a wonderful anniversary!

To be continued...

Bisbee Arizona

We spent part of a day in the little town of Bisbee Arizona this week. It's an old mining town that has out-lived the closing of the mines. The town was built in the draw and up the sides of the hills on both sides. The County seat was moved here from Tombstone after the mines filled with water there and the town went down to about nothing. That's another story.

Bisbee has a lot of art and craft type stores (tourist trap) but it is still fun to walk the streets. One of the larger buildings in town is a town and mining museum.

We came here for a tour of the copper mine and a walk around town. We went directly to the mine, found a parking spot and figured we should come back after finding a school bus in the parking lot. As it turned out we needed a reservation for the tour; the noon tour had space available so we made reservation and then went into town to look around. When we got back the bus was gone, yea.

Not being one to view thing from the truck, we parked as soon as we could and walked from one end of town to the other. As we said it's a small town.

Also, as we said the town is right on the edge of the hills.

Back to the mine for our tour and this is our entrance to the mine. It's straight into the side of the mountain with several layers of shafts above and below this one, all about 100' above or below the other.

They gave us hard hats, coats and battery lanterns. Kind of a tight squeeze, but we all got onto the train to head underground. As you can see, we had to be very friendly with the other tourists. Notice the 1X8 above our heads; this is so if one tries to stand up you don't get your head taken off by the rocks in the top of the tunnel.

Off we go...

About 200' into the mine off to our left was another shaft that went miles underground.

This is a typical drill pattern (24 holes) with fuses ready for lighting to blow out another layer of rock. The miners would muck out the loose rocks, drill and be ready to blast at the end of the work shift. On the way out they would light the fuses and when then next shift came down there would be another pile of rocks for them to haul out and then they would drill...over and over 6 days a week.

Hey they had elevators to take the men up and down. A little tighter than we are used to but it worked for them.

This is one of the larger shafts that we walked down. Notice that there is very little cribbing holding up all the rock. Why do we keep thinking about earthquakes in these type of situations?

The rocks would be pushed down chutes and drop down into cars on the next lower level and then they would move out of the mine for smelting, or what ever they did with it.

What can we say? They had to go too. There was one person that would have to push them out of the mine, dump and bring back. Did I mention that they are also built out of heavy steel plate and that would make them hard to move.

For those that are a little on the slow side, yes it's a two hole toilet. Never did find the sink so you could wash your hands after use.

Back on top and down the road about a mile or two is this open pit mine. This picture is looking down and the next picture is looking right into the same hole. Out of sight further to the right the hole continues.

The water or should I say liquid at the bottom is black. Wonder if it's safe to drink?

Went back into town and had lunch on the patio of one of the old hotels, sitting in the sun watching the world go by. Another very good day and a nice lunch.

To be continued...

32 years and counting

March 11 2009 is our 32nd wedding anniversary. We were married in Lewiston, Idaho by Jackie's brother Rick in the Orchards United Methodist Church. We spent our wedding night across the river in Clarkston, Washington. We then traveled to and spent our second night in Richland and then back home to Seattle for work on Monday.

The wedding was attended by Linda, Rick's wife and their 2 children Jim and Brad, Jackie's Mom and step Dad. Brad walked up and down the pews picking up pencils and dropping them onto the wood floor. All the time Jim kept whispering (loudly) "Brad... Stop". Oh well is was a great day for both of us. (Do we look young or what?!)

In 1983 we had our picture taken with Deanna. Note that Jackie's hair is a lot shorter and Dick's hair is still red and he still has hair.

Jackie's hair is about the same but Dick's is getting a little thin and has lost some of it's color.

We moved to Lopez Island and had this picture taken while we were working the food booth at one of the local high school games. This was in 1992. Jackie's hair keeps getting shorter and Dick's still has lots of red in it (note Jackie's "large" glasses).

Our anniversary dinner in 2002 was again another special day thanks to Deanna, her sisters Debbie and Michelle, and her future husband Darin who footed most of the bill at Canlis in Seattle. What you don't see is Dick has crutches because of an accident and a crushed foot.

And today we spent the day sharing our time together going underground in a mine in Bisbee Arizona. You can't tell by the picture but Jackie's hair is real short and you can tell the color of Dick's by looking at his beard.

To be continued,

More Southeast Arizona

Just down the road from our park is Holy Trinity Monastery. It has a lovely grounds with a gift shop, bookstore, and RV park. We walked the grounds and found a geocache.

Then on to Tombstone--The town that would not die. It is definitely a tourist trap, but also has a lot of history, so was very interesting. The gunfight at the OK Corral happens every day at 2:00, but you have to pay, so we opted to just see the town. Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and other famous folk from the late 1800's actually lived here.

Isn't this guy interesting? Guess he got tired of waiting (for what, I don't know).

Looking down the main street in town. Most of the buildings don't date back to the 1800s because of fires but they have done a good job of making it look old. Including dirt over the paved street.

Another day we drove down to Ft. Huachuca. Our friends told us to be sure to go to the museum there, and they were absolutely correct. The museums (Ft. Huachuca and the Military Intelligence Museums) were very well done.

A large section of the museum was about the Buffalo Soldiers from the 1800s through WW II. We're never too old to learn about our history. The way the information was presented was very well done.

Yesterday we found a way to supplement our income: Pizza delivery? Dick took the sign up to the manager and said "I am here about the sign" his eyes lit up and had a grin from ear to ear, thinking "I finally found a driver". He lost his smile when Dick introduced himself as Driver.

The employees at the pizza place where we went to lunch got a kick out of our last name!

After lunch we once again went geocaching with Rod, Ardith, Charlie and Nila. (Of course Dick is taking the picture!) We found four caches, several of which Nila and Charlie had already found, but they were good sports. It has really been a fun way to see the area. (And we were really glad we wore jeans rather than shorts for our searches in the desert!)

This was also Rod and Ardith's first geocaching trip and first find. Good for you guys.

To be continued...

Friends and Chiricahua National Monument

We are on the move again. We left Casa Grande on Sunday heading to St. David AZ for two weeks. On the way down we took a detour to visit Jackie's high school classmate, Merrilee and her husband, Ron, who live in No. Tucson. Here we are enjoying the visit on the patio. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful place to be.

We parked our rig on the road near their home, but were able to watch it from the patio area.

After arriving at the RV Park, we spent the rest of Sunday and part of Monday visiting with friends we have met on the road, who also have Montanas; Rod and Ardith also Charlie and Nila, great to see them again. Ardith had dinner ready for us on Sunday night so we could relax after setting up the rig (and it was delicious!). We played dominos last night till after 10:00 pm and had a ball. They both have to move out of this park tomorrow, but are only going a few miles down the road so will be able to get together again.

Today, Tuesday we headed out to Chiricahua (chira-cowa) National Monument Park here in Southern Arizona. It also is called Land of Standing up Rocks, and after you see the pictures you will see why. It was only about an 80-mile trip to the park. We paid our fee, oh no, at our age we get in for free. We went to the visitors’ center and filled up on the history of the area, picked up some maps and headed back to the truck for the 9-mile drive to the top of the mountain.
On the way up we checked out the small camping area. Great spot to camp if you are tenting or in a very small RV. We left the campground and came around a corner to witness an area of the mountain that is called Organ Pipe Formation. After stretching our necks looking we will only share 3 pictures of this area.

You have to click and enlarge some of these to really see what we got to see.

We continued (very slowly) up the hill and to our dismay we had gone through the area of all the great views…NOT. On the way up we could see all the way to the East coast, well maybe New Mexico.

We parked at the top, had lunch and took a short hike on the Massai Nature Trail. Wow, what a view looking down at the thousands of rock formations. You can see for yourself what it is like. We had our picture taken by some people we met on the trail. I think you can see Mexico behind us. Well maybe close but you sure could see for miles and miles.

We went about a ½ mile down the road to another trailhead where we could hike to Echo Canyon Grotto. This took us down to an area where we could walk around to the base of some of these magnificent displays of nature. Took a few shots from this area. A few would mean that today we took 110 pictures. Wish we could share all of them with you, but maybe another time.

This is at the bottom of several large rock piles. Not sure what whould happen if there was an earthquake.

The other thing that we thought was really great, this is the first time in months we walked in a forest of pine and fir trees. We just loved the smell. I guess we do miss Washington!

To be continued...