Bisbee, Arizona, United States
Headed south today, to Bisbee, AZ, just north of the Mexican
border.
En route, we passed through Benson, AZ. QUICK:
what do Benson, AZ and Winslow, AZ have in common?? If you said “there’s
a song about each one!” you were correct.
NOW: what made the “Benson,
Arizona” song famous?? If you said Dark
Star, you are showing your age, but you are still correct. As we were approaching Benson, Tim asked me
if I remembered the song running under the opening credits of Dark Star. I did not,
When I said “Benson, Arizona seems a rather obscure place for someone to
pick it to write a song about…”
(although the same might once have been said about Winslow, Arizona),
Tim, who remembers everything he ever heard, told me this story:
The songwriter, whose name is Bill Taylor, in case you don’t
have it trippingly on your tongue, was driving to somewhere in New Mexico, when
his car broke down—on Christmas day. He
managed to limp into Benson, AZ, and two complete strangers helped him out by
diagnosing the problem and providing the part to fix it—on Christmas day! Much
later, when Taylor was working on writing a song for Dark Star, he
thought of Benson, AZ, and made it the subject of the song. In return, Benson, AZ, now has a street named
Dark Star Rd. You can look it up on
Google Maps! And in case you think that Tim made up this far-fetched story, here
it is in the words of Bill Taylor himself! Scroll down to just below the
picture of the astronauts.
After passing through Benson, we made a stop at Tombstone,
AZ, home of the famed Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. In fact, it seems that there
were MANY gunfights in Tombstone in the late 19th century—about
every half-block in Tombstone you can find a marker explaining who shot whom at
that spot. The town has been preserved
(or maybe restored?) to its appearance in the wild west days. This was an
entertaining visit. (See photos with
comments.) The town now is a tourist trap, but at least it is on the site of a
genuine lawless gunfighting town. You
can buy tickets to see any number of re-enactment gunfights daily, including in
the O.K. Corral, but the first one of the day is at 10, and the first one in
the O.K. Corral was at 11. We were heading back to the car at 9:15. We weren’t
going to hang around for an hour for a knock-off gunfight, so, having walked
around for a few minutes taking in the sights, we headed out to the Coronado
National Memorial.
The Coronado
National Memorial in Hereford, AZ, about a mile north of the Mexican
border, commemorates the Coronado Expedition of 1540-1542, in which a group of
300 Spaniards, led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, went in search of Seven
Cities of Gold, which had been reported by an earlier Spanish emissary, but said
emissary appears simply to have lied, as there were no cities of gold at
all—let alone seven. One wonders what
the heck he was thinking!
I think the real reason for making the park is that it
incorporates four different ecological regions:
the Sonoran Desert, the Chihuahuan Desert, the Rocky Mountains, and the
Sierra Madre.
We took a drive up to
Coronado Peak, and then walked the 4/10 of a mile (300-foot climb at about 6500
ft elevation) to the actual peak, from which you get amazing views in 360
degrees. Lots of photos taking; a bunch
of them posted. It’s mostly just
gorgeous scenery, so not so many comments, but we were really glad we took the
hike.
We had lunch at a place called Morning Star in, as the
restaurant’s advertising said, “beautiful downtown Palaminas,” which consists
entirely, as near as we could tell, of Morning Star and a defunct diner. We were surrounded in the restaurant by what
appeared to be genuine cowboys and cowgirls—10-gallon hats, boots, fringed
skirts, the works. Everyone knew that we
were from out of town.
After lunch, we headed to Bisbee, AZ, where we stayed in a
motor inn which consists of vintage trailers.
(See MANY photos!) Our “room” was
a 1957 Airfloat Flagship. It’s 35’ long
and I wouldn’t DREAM of trying to tow it anywhere! There’s a DVD in the room of a movie starring
Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnez called The Long Long Trailer.
The scene that was queued up when we turned
on the machine showed Arnez trying to back the thing (towing it with a HUGE
convertible) and, of course, running over everything in sight. Bonkers.
There was one Airfloat model even longer: the Presidential Landyacht,
which was 45 feet long. I can’t even
begin to imagine.
This is a goofy, but highly entertaining, hotel. As you may remember from previous trips, we
have now stayed overnight in Tee Pees, a Caboose, and a luxury trailer—not to
mention various Amtrak roomettes. We also stayed overnight in a boat one time,
but that was before my travel blogging days, so no record of that trip. Stick
with us—we know how to have fun. If you come to Bisbee (the hotel is actually
in Lowell, adjacent), be sure you check carefully: not all the trailers have bathrooms!
There is no grounded outlet in the trailer, so I can’t plug
in the laptop, and I don’t have enough battery to log in and upload a bunch of
photos, so I’ll upload this when I can.
Tomorrow’s adventure will take us to two more national park sites in
Arizona: Fort Bowie and Chiricahua National Monument.
harpo55
2024-10-16
A blimp/balloon?? Ok....... IDK!! I like the small businesses. Cool. Now 4/10 of a mile (300-foot climb) - quite a climb. Esp at altitude. Record player was something I haven't seen in a while. Lots of cool nature photos. Keep rolling along!!