Tombstone Territory

Benson & Tombstone AZ

Day 24

Slept, woke, slept, woke to the rootin' tootin' railroad trains.  Seemed almost constant there for a while...I think it may have had something to do with an accident on the tracks near Tucson.  They must have been backed up last night, tonight seems much quieter.  We'll see.

Yesterday afternoon, when we arrived, the weather was quite warm.  Well, that all changed during the night.  The sun has been replaced by thick clouds and the temps may not get out of the 60's.  Oh well, at least we won't have to worry about getting overheated today!

Mid morning we headed out to Tombstone, about 25 miles south of here.  Took the scenic road down and although it wasn't exactly 'scenic', there was more to see than on the highway.  This was actually a stage coach run between the towns of Tombstone and Benson.  Jim has always wanted to stop here.  It's on his 'Bucket List'...way down on his bucket list.

Our first stop was Boot Hill.  The Baby Boomer Generation watched so many westerns we are all familiar with it.  Actually, it was interesting.  It certainly tells a story of the violence in the area at that time.  So many murders, sorta sounds like North Charleston on a Saturday night...

They were SO not politically correct back then...

Next stop was the Town Hall, now a museum.  Excellent!  Tells the real story of the cowboys we became acquainted with watching TV in the late 50's and early 60's.  We spent a couple of hours there, which was amazing because Jim can run through a museum in record time.  I swear we got through the Smithsonian in an hour years ago.  His thoughts are...why waste time reading everything, it happened a long time ago!  Today he read everything. 

Tombstone Court House

My problem was that I couldn't get the TV theme songs out of my head!  As I stood there reading about Wyatt Earp, the song immediately popped into my head...

Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp,

Brave, courageous and bold.

Long live his fame, long live his glory

And long may his story be told

The building  also had exhibits from the mining history, weapons, Native Americans and life in general at the time. Very informative.  It has photos of all of the sheriffs and as soon as I laid eyes on one yet another song popped into my head!  John Slaughter, as in 'Texas John Slaughter':

Texas John Slaughter made 'em do what they outta,

And if they didn't...they died.

Why is it, I can't remember what I did five minutes ago, but I can remember the words and melody verbatim of  something from 1960?  And good old John stayed, looping around my brain all day...

Our generation was fed a constant stream of violence on TV.  Gosh, even our cartoons were violent.  We all played cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, every boy had a cap gun...I think we 'got it out of out system'  Later, they banned all that stuff and so many of the young are more violent than our generation ever thought of being!

Main Street

We had some lunch and walked the old downtown.  Some of it is typical touristy junk, but still walking up and down the boardwalks in fun.  There are some decent shops also. 

It started to rain  so we headed to for a return visit to Kartchner Caverns State Park,  On the way we passed through another Border Patrol check point...what's that, like four now?  We went in 2008 and these caverns are worth a second trip.  Arizona  made the area a state park to preserve the site.I highly recommended it , some of the best caverns in the country and tours are by park rangers who know what they are talking about.   Just make sure you aren't 'linty'...they let you know that lint is the enemy of caverns and they do everything short of running a Lint-Pick-Up roller over your body.

Back to the RV, had a nice dinner and relaxed.  Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be GREAT!  I'm afraid to believe the forecast...