Feb 8, Bisbee

Yesterday we woke to clouds and cold. We had planned on taking a jeep tour but given the iffy weather, we decided to go to Tombstone instead. Tombstone. When I was a kid we’d go to Knott’s Berry Farm, which back then was a reconstructed ghost town with the mandatory gunfights and madams. Tombstone reminds me of that, not only for the touristy drama but also the “charge you every time you turn around” philosophy. While we were there it started to rain and a bitter wind blew up, so we checked out the museum and then headed back to Cleo, where we snuggled up and watched the Superbowl game. We really thought it would be warmer here!

The car this morning was covered with white ice and I had to put my shoulder to the door to get it open so I could take Gypsy on her walk. But at least the sun was shining, so we went to find the rest of the local geo-caches. These involved more driving but also took us up on top of some remote roads that had great views of the mountains. We also did some scrambling up the side of hills and turned over lots of rocks. Geo-caching is hard on the fingernails.

In the afternoon we took the jeep tour we’d planned for yesterday, where the jeep got to do the hill climbing. The gal driving the tour had some good stories about the town of Bisbee and we discovered that there are indeed some roads up those hills. Not many, and they are one car wide even though they’re two-way streets. I was glad she was driving.

We got to look at some of the top-of-the-stairs houses from the hills across from them. The most interesting one was a new house that was built one level higher than the stairs went, so all the construction materials were hauled up by hand first up the stairs and then up a steep path to the building site. I just can’t help thinking about those moments when you discover you’re out of Rocky Road ice cream at 10 at night. I’d just hop in the car and run over to the local grocery, but if I lived in that house, I’d decide I’d settle for a piece of toast and worry about the ice cream another day.

This is the Lavender Pit, named not for the color but for the mining engineer who first designed the plan to mine this lode. They took 8 Billion with a B pounds of copper out of this 1,000' deep pit.