On the Road again... Part 1

October 15^th was the day we finished our six month stint as camp-hosts in Elk Pines RV Resort. It was sad to say goodbye, but we know we will keep in touch with those residents we can count as friends. However, at the same time, Richard and I were ready to move on and get back on the road.

We weren't sure if we needed to go back to Texas to re-register our trusty truck, Benny, or our fifth-wheel trailer, the Jet, but it seems Texas law has changed and there is no physical need to take them a thousand miles to a Texas garage for certification. Online registration is enough, which just shows that the internet has more uses than simply keeping in touch with family and old and new friends. 

So that meant we had two weeks to see a little more of southern Arizona.  We were due to begin our next work-camping position on 1st November in Indian Skies RV Resort, Coolidge, where we spent last winter. It looks like life as part-time camp-hosts suits us.  

We drove 350 miles south off the pine clad Mogollon Rim to Fort Huachuca, not far from the Mexican border. It was originally set up as a fort in 1882 during the Indian Wars, and was used as a base to hunt for Geronimo, then extended during the war with Mexico. Strategically commandeering 240 degree visibility over an enormous area of desert interspersed by mountains that rise out of the flat desert like mirage ships, the Fort developed a new signalling system to communicate with its commanders away on missions in the hinterland.  During WW2 and beyond, it became a leader in field intelligence for the US Army.

We stayed in the base's RV site for 4 nights and managed to cram in a lot of sight seeing in a few days. Our first excursion was to nearby Tombstone, infamous for the gunfight at the OK Corral between the famous lawman Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and his sidekick Doc Holliday, against the Clanton-McLaury gang. Disappointingly, there was little about this former mining town that was not tourist oriented, but we did enjoy visiting the Cowboy museum and learning about the famous lawmen and gangsters of the west. The owner was very passionate about the collectible memorabilia he had personally acquired over a lifetime.

When he brought out the gun held by Kurt Russel in his role as Doc Holliday in the film Tombstone, I had to have a photo taken.

It was obviously a popular exhibit. Having just had lunch in a building named after Doc's real-life girlfriend, Big Nose Kate, a one time "lady of the night", I was keen to see if he had a photo of her. The owner told me her monicker was not due to the size of her nose (as shown below),

but because of her nosy personality. It obviously pays to know your customers.

Forgive the somewhat gruesome pictures that follow, but these things also intrigued me. Here is a photo of a child who survived scalping and grew into adulthood. 

This is the real Calamity Jane, 

and finally, here is Jesse James' trigger finger. 

 Sorry if I managed to de-romanticize the wild west a little!

I enjoyed our trip to Bisbee much more. It was a quirky little town built over and between several mountains on the proceeds of copper hidden in them there hills. We really enjoyed the Mining Museum. The historical society of the town consulted with the Smithsonian to produce a series of displays that portrayed the reasons for Bisbee's growth and decline over a century; (copper was found just when demand for it was optimal); what problems growth and decline in demand brought as the town grew to some 35,000 inhabitants. It showed how the community, built on an immigrant labor force, melded into a city that in its heyday was so important to the economy and society of the area, its existence was one of the deciding factors that led to the awarding of statehood to Arizona in 1912.

Our final afternoon was spent in Kartchner Caverns. Since discovering the virgin cave system in the 1974, Gary Tenen and Randy Tuffts and the Kartchner family below whose land it sits, kept its existence secret until the state of Arizona agreed to buy the land and turn it into a state park in 1988. This ensured that the cave was kept as pristine as possible. It is still a carefully maintained living cave, with formations that continue to grow in a unique and carefully isolated eco-system. Visitors are not allowed to touch anything in the cave other than on the built pathway, to ensure human bacteria does not destroy the living cave. The lighting is very low and aimed at specific formations, the evolution of which are explained by the guide. The pictures below were not taken by me, (you're not allowed to take photos in the caves), but are pictures taken of the displays in the visitor's center. One part of the cave contains a bat maternity and nursery roost, and it opens to the public only once the females and their newborn have left for the winter, until they return in the spring. The other part of the cave called the Throne Room (they are linked with a tiny but long passage, and you can hear the guides talking in one cave whilst you are in the other) hosts one of the longest soda straw stalactites in the world - just over 22 feet or some 6.5 meters, and a 58 foot (18 meters) column named Kubla Kahn.  These formations grow at a rate of one 16th of an inch every 100 years, so the age of this cave is mind-boggling.

For someone who had never been in a living cave before, it was an incomparable experience.