Scubabunny & The Captain

From Tombstone we headed onto Tucson the next day. We did a quick visit with my god mother, checked out some cacti and managed to squeeze in a trip to the PIMA Air & Space Museum airplane boneyard. It was a jam-packed day! The airplane boneyard at the museum was always on Gav's list of must-sees. If you've ever seen the 80's flick, Can't Buy Me Love, you'll remember the airplane graveyard scene. Let's just say, it wasn't quite as romantic as it was in the movie. But, anyway. Trying to navigate their website and figure out if we could get day-of ticket or needed a reservation was next to impossible. So, we opted to show up when they opened and hope for the best. We arrived right after opening time and there were at least 20 people in the line in front of us. Almost a half hour later, we got our hands on tickets for a tour that morning. Starting on November 1st, you now have to make a reservation 2 weeks in advance, for security reasons, to do the bone...

It would be criminal to come all the way to SE Arizona and not at least do a quick drive-by of Tombstone. It's the quintessential Old West town. We also happened to arrive on the weekend of the annual Helldorado celebration, including a parade. A little unnerving was the amount of people taking full advantage of Arizona's open carry law. For those who don't know what this means, you can carry your gun, visible for the world to see, pretty much wherever you want. I'm not sure why people needed their handguns at a parade for families, but there were plenty of them around. Anyway, moving on.... Some Tombstone pics... Country humour..   This guy called his scooter his trusty ass. He came back out of the bar, right after entering, to holster his loaded gun on said trusty ass. So, his loaded weapon was just hanging out in plain view, while he was in the bar drinking. Still scratching my head on this one.   Oldest bar in Tombstone, Crystal Palace Saloon ...

Way, way, way overdue. Trying to catch up on the rest of our trip, before the New Year is upon us. SO, we headed west from El Paso, back into the very southern border of New Mexico. No joke, that drive was nothing but Border Patrol. Very little to see landscapewise, but at least 8 Border Patrol agents in a 2 hour stretch, on the road that borders Mexico. We had heard of this place called Chiricahua National Monument from neighbours at a campground early in our trip. It's in the south eastern corner of Arizona, just south of I-10, and has some of the most unusual rock formations. True story: without our reading glasses on, Gav and I both thought it was Chihuahua, like the dog. Nope, it's pronounced Cheery-cah-how, just in case you go, you won't embarrass yourself like we did! We had read that the campground at the park was very small, didn't take reservations and filled up quickly. Thank god for the internet, we found a tip for a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) site ...

White Sands National Monument is just west of a town called Alamogordo. East of Alamogordo is a little town called Cloudcroft. It is literally above the clouds, on the right day. You drive up about 4,000 feet and about 20 miles from Alamogordo to get there. It's long been a mountain town, respite from the heat of the desert, and a winter sports town, since it gets lots of snow. In 1899, when the railroad was built, it was designed to haul timber from the Cloudcroft area down the hill. Once the area was deforested, the train became a passenger train, for those escaping the desert floor. It ceased to be a viable means of transport in 1947 and the 58 trestles were left to fall into ruin. Some local historically minded inviduals decided at least one trestle should be saved in the 1990's and spent a lot of time and money to bring the trestle, seen in the pic below, back to it's glory. Unfortunately, you can't walk on it, but just enjoy it from a distance. At this particu...

I still have a few more entries to catch up on, for the rest of our trip into Arizona, Utah and Nevada, but today is the last day of the trip for me and I added up some stats for the last 23 days. Gav still has to drive back to Seattle, while I fly home from Las Vegas. States visited: 5, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada (+ Gav drove through Colorado, Idaho & Oregon to get to New Mexico) National Parks visited: 3 National Monuments or Historic Parks: 10 Camp sites: 12 Miles hiked: 76.5 Miles biked: 2.5 (not a lot of biking where we camped) Miles driven: 5,572 so far (Gav drove 1,871 to pick me up in Albuquerque) + ~1,200 miles that Gav will be driving back to Seattle = ~6,600 miles total Memories made: infinity

I have no idea where the notion came from, but the instigator of this trip was White Sands National Monument. I knew I wanted to go. I didn't know anything about it, except it was the largest gypsum crystal desert in the world and I wanted to see it. Once we realized how much other cool stuff was in New Mexico, it was an easy choice to start our fall trip in this state.   If your're wondering where White Sands is, well, it's in the middle of a military installation. No kidding. It is completely surrounded by White Sands Missile Range and Holloway Air Force Base. The first atomic bomb was dropped at Trinity Site, at the north end of the missile range. You can visit the site only two days a year. The government doesn't want to take time off from testing missiles it would seem. We just missed the October date by 2 weeks. Better luck next time. The bummer about being so close to this all action, jet noise...lots of jet noise. We were hiking miles into the dunes and cou...