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Set the alarm for 7:00am but, as usual woke the roosters up at dawn. By 7:00am I was ready to go and unwilling to wait on the hotel "continental" breakfast. I've been to the "continent" and it's nothing like that. Besides, I like to ride for an hour or so then stop for a leisurely breakfast. Don't know why, just do.
I may, or may not have mentioned in the past, but I think New Mexico is one of the best kept secrets in America. It's a beautiful state (up north, frankly), and filled with some of the nicest people in the U.S. I rank them right up there with Tennessee folks, and that's high ranking for this old boy.
I can't say the southern route through New Mexico is all that pretty or exciting. It was mostly sand and heat with a few dust devils thrown in for good measure. Fortunately, I didn't encountered some of the "white" out dust storm which are so well prophesied via signs about every five or so miles.
You can't see it very clearly, but enlarged (click the picture) you should see the remains of a "dust devil" toward the right side of this picture. Saw several of these during my trip through southern New Mexico.
About 1:00pm I turned south on SR80 at Benson, AZ. Tombstone is about 20 miles south.
I don't care much for the commercialization that goes on in these places. I just like to visit the country and see the vistas people in history saw. Consequently, I was in Tombstone a very short while, but I got the flavor of the place.
In actuality, the argument between the Earps and Doc Holliday, and the Clantons and McLaurys had a lot more to do with rival gangs than it did law enforcement and justice. The "Cowboys" were hooked up with county sheriff Behan and that's where the real power lay. Behan was the tax collector and got his cut off the top. The Earps were tied into the "city" folks and there was really little "opportunity" there.
After all the fictionalization of the Wyatt Earp legend we'll never know what he was really like. But enough is known about his habits and events surrounding his life to make a couple of statements about him. He was evidently fearless, and kept his head about him in scrape after scrape. He never drank whiskey, favoring coffee while others impaired their abilities. He did stand up and walk across the creek firing at the hidden, ambushing cowboys. But he never got a scratch. In fact, he was never wounded during his career. Several others weren't that lucky though.
Big Nose Kate was, of course, Doc Holliday's companion. While frequenting saloons she never, to my knowledge owned one, or, until the modern commercial era, had one named after her.
Street scene bearing probably little resemblance to how it looked back in the early 1880s.
The Oriental Saloon, one of the few authentic places and buildings in Tombstone today.
Wasn't this the saloon Wyatt threw the badass faro dealer out of in 'Tombstone?'
BTW - the 1993 Tombstone with Kurt Russell as Wyatt and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday has it all over the 1994 'Wyatt Earp' of Kevin Costner (Wyatt) and Dennis Quaid (Doc). Just no contest here at all.
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| And now a clothing emporium |
Another authentic edifice. The famous Bird Cage Theatre.
Supposedly the building in which Morgan Earp was murdered.
I was struck by how hot it was in Tombstone in mid-May. Yeah, I know, it's a dry heat, but I was really feeling it while there. It made me think how uncomfortable it must have been for the folks there in 1882 when there was no such thing as air conditioning. I should know how it was...I grew up in humid central Florida without air conditioning at all. We just had a couple of electric fans to move the hot air around, and, believe me, it got hot there. We survived it, so these folks could have as well.
But I gotta believe it got a little tense downwind of some of those miners and gamblers in the saloons. One wonders how much irritation created by the heat may have contributed to some of those brawls and shootings that happened in the old west.
Pulled out of Tombstone about 3:00pm heading up I-10 to Tucson. Once again determined that trying to sleep in the heat of a tent just didn't cut it so got a room and am (happily) holed up awaiting tomorrow's adventure.
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