We called ahead to the Shady Dell to see if they had any space. The alternative was the RV ‘park’ by the Queen mine. Luckily they did have a spot. We got there and were greeted by a young, friendly, eclectic couple. They welcomed us and showed us our spot. It was the end spot on the row, but it didn’t matter since we weren’t there to spend all our time in the trailer. I don’t have any shots of the Shady Dell or the trailers as many others have those and you can readily find them. Naturally, being an Airstream fan, I would have liked to have seen more, or ALL, Airstreams.
We got up the next morning and decided to visit Bisbee. We knew we wanted to take the Queen Mine tour and had made reservations already so we hit that the first thing. This is an interesting tour as you sit astride a train, like the ones that were used, and you go about 1500′ into the mine horizontally. This not like a roller coaster. However it was a bit stressful on the knees in the position we rode. We made about 3 stops at various points to see historical portions of the mine. The picture below shows Roxie checking out the ‘restrooms’ they had down in the mine. No coming out to use the toilet so they put the toilet where you were, on rails. Must be fun when there was more than one with a need.
After the tour we heading to downtown Bisbee. This is town has a lot of history and it’s livelihood is now tourism. There are a few characters living around here. See the photo down the page of a vehicle we saw.
We walked around, had lunch, went in stores, watched other people, generally did the tourist thing. Since today was Valentine’s Day and a Saturday the town was pretty busy. We went back to the trailer for a short rest in the afternoon. We tried to find a restaurant but the holiday made that problematic. I was able to sneak off and get a card and some flowers at the local Safeway before. We ended up going to a Chinese restaurant south of town. We agreed that it was not to our liking. Bisbee is very close to the Mexican border and we drove down near it after dinner. Unfortunately we did not bring our birth certificates so we could not go across, which was fine with me.
The next day we continued our touristy ways and did a day trip to Tombstone. It was overcast so it was not very hot. You can imagine what Tombstone would be like if you try real hard. The historic streets are still dirt, luckily it did not rain. The courthouse is a very interesting site to see. They have a show that reenacts the OK Corral shootout. We passed on that. We walked around, got tired, had some lunch. Here is a hearse from those times:
We also had to stop at the Boothill cemetery. It was a bit disappointing because everything seemed new. New rocks on the graves, new signs, etc. I would think a cemetery from that time would be a bit older. Here is one such example:
We headed back to Bisbee and I stopped to take a picture of the Lavender Pit open pit copper mine. The picture does not do it justice. It is HUGE! The main road goes right by and around it. You can see the tracks going down it. Each of these is easily as wide as a two lane road. Trying to give you some scale.
Our last morning in Bisbee we had breakfast at Dot’s Diner that they have restored at the Shady Dell. The ambiance was very fun. We left Bisbee enroute to our next stop, find out in the next installment.
