2015 - Charleston's Trailer Tripping: Day 22

March 25 – 27. Huachuca City is not our destination. But it is close to all the sites we want to visit. Tombstone is next door, Kartchner Caverns State Park is the other way. So is Bisbee. We stayed here for three nights. We are staying at Tombstone Territories RV Resort. This is a small park with less than 100 sites. This is a very nice place out in the desert. The layout is nice, neat and clean and the sites are very large and we have a strong WiFi signal at our site. It is very quiet and the night sky is full of stars. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the stars at night. The only downside to this park is that the restrooms are old and there are only two shower stalls in each of the restrooms; for 100+ people. And there is a shared dressing room for the two stalls, so no privacy. So it will be a sponge bath for me in the trailer.

TOMBSTONE

Tombstone is a Historical American Landmark. It is an authentic western town from the 1880's. Most of the buildings in the downtown area are original and silver is what made this town prosperous in the 1880’s. This is the place where the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday had a 30 second gunfight with five outlaw cowboys at O.K. Corral. This gunfight became known as the most famous gunfight in the history of the American west. The good guys won.

We wandered the main street and checked out all the shops (mostly tacky tourist stuff). One shop, “Arlenes” had some nice stuff in it.

This was a character on the street corner.

Had a great lunch here

One of the glass art works in this place.

We had a very nice lunch at Longhorn Restaurant.

Dave had liver and onions and I had salmon.

KARTCHNER CAVERNS STATE PARK

Kartchner Caverns is a living cave. This limestone cave was discovered in 1974 by two men who earlier found the sinkhole leading to the cavern. At that time the land where the caverns are was owned by James and Lois Kartchner, who later donated the land to the state park system. These caverns are amazing with gigantic formations that have started forming over 100,000 years ago. You can witness the cave living as you tour it. We did the Big Room tour. This is a new tour and it closes every April when the bats migrate to this room to give birth.

Entrance to the BIG ROOM tour. We were not allowed to take photos (because it bothers the other visitors... it’s only because they want you to buy the books and postcards). So I got the cave pictures off of GOOGLE and they are pictures of the areas we actually saw. This cavern is awesome and it is a ‘must see’ whenever you are south eastern part of Arizona.

They call these ‘turnips’.

The Big Room

There is a garden and nature trail on the grounds of the Kartchner Caverns Visitor Center.

Several signs along the trail had this carved artwork on them.

BISBEE

Bisbee became internationally renowned during the 1880’s mining rush. Bisbee mines, nestled in the foothills of the Mule Mountains in southeast Arizona produced more than $2 billion in copper, gold, lead, silver and zinc. By 1900 Bisbee was the largest cosmopolitan center between St. Louis and San Francisco. Most of the mines closed in the early 1970’s. Soon the miner’s shacks were replaced with artist studios. Today it is a colorful town with lots of galleries and unique shops. We found very few tacky tourist shops.