Tombstone in the Sideview Mirrors

Monday, March 26, 2007
Tombstone, AZ

There’s a large rig pulling a trailer parked behind me. The car in the trailer is the GENERAL LEE from the Dukes of Hazzard. I missed getting a pic of the actual car but it has caused much excitement in Tombstone.



(There is no Starbucks in Tombstone. How did they miss a place????)


I’ve now had my first bad neighbors. They’re driving one of those huge diesel pushers and they have the biggest, baddest Doberman I’ve ever seen. And that dog barks constantly .I’m about to take my soundless zapper over to their rig and start laying some nasty sound on the dog. My other neighbors—the ones with the woman driving the huge truck and pulling the travel trailer and the man on the big motorcycle left. Between the two of them they wore so much leather I expect they had to file an environmental impact statement to kill that many cows. They were nice though and it encouraged me to see another woman driving such a huge rig.

I got a rose cutting off the largest rosebush in the world. And it is huge!!!!!! Well worth the modest price of admission which was 3 bucks. It is half way in full bloom and smells wonderful. Apparently someone sent a cutting from back east to this Mrs. Banks here in Tombstone back in the 19th century. There are blooming rose plants taken from it all over the town.





Mercifully, the gun battles are over. I was walking downtown and passed 3 Germans all dressed up in black Stetsons, boots, white tee shirts and jeans sitting on the bench in front of the saloon. They looked so authentic that it gave me a raised eyebrow to hear them speaking German!


I had to include a pic of my favorite home landscaping job. It is typical of the creativity and great sense of humor desert dwellers have!


The place has pretty much cleared out after the week-end. I heard some locals complaining that the place was growing too fast—it has gone from 1500 to 3000 in the last few years. Where are all the people coming from? California? I’m amazed at how many people there are like me—just a tad older—who are checking out places to retire. Maybe it’s a distinctly American solution to problems—move somewhere else. The RV parks seem full of senior citizens driving these HUGE expensive rigs and towing late model vehicles behind them. What are they looking for? Shouldn’t they have found it by now? But they seem to be having a good time even if it’s
lights out by 8:30pm.



Tomorrow I finally leave the Wells Fargo RV Park in downtown Tombstone. It's been a great place to stay. I'm going to try and get an early start which is turning out to be easier than I thought. There's nothing quite like the simultaneous starting up of about 7 huge diesel-pushers and the junior varsity of macho V-10 turbo pick-em trucks!!!

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