Friday, November 24, 2017

Bisbee, Arizona

November 8 - 14, 2017:


It’s a beautiful ride of 167 miles from Silver City to Bisbee, Arizona on routes 90 to I-10 to 80.  The scenery was stunning in places with blue sky and large white cumulous clouds.  Route 80 is fairly desolate, more of a backroad, with less traffic.  No matter how many times you travel to Bisbee, the views of the huge Lavender Pit Mine off to the side and the red colored hillsides ahead are just WOW !  The setting of Bisbee amongst the surrounding mountains is really special, there are a few other places that compare, maybe Telluride Colorado, but most of them have been ruined by upscale development.



Checking the rear view


How long before the arms go numb holding those ape hanger handlebars ?
 

Had to stop and admire this view on route 80


I always stop at the Geronimo surrender monument


We are staying at the Queen Mine RV Park on the hilltop next to the Copper Queen Mine overlooking Bisbee.  It’s a great campground as its walking distance to downtown.  We are here for a week and this is our last campground, #61, before our winter layover in Tucson.  Bisbee has that southwest liberal “be kind” vibe similar to Tucson that appeals to us.  I easily fit in here, there are many bearded gray haired ponytail guys walking around town.



View from the campsite looking towards downtown

The campground from this vantage point appears to be in the mine


Bisbee started when Lt. Anthony Rucker of the 6th US Calvary led an army patrol into the Mule mountains in 1877 hunting for renegade Apaches.  They found no Apaches but Jack Dunn, a scout for the patrol did find traces of copper in the rocks.  Rucker and Dunn were unable to go to Tucson to file a mining claim, so they hired George Warren to go and file the claim in their names.  George did go to Tucson and file the claim but did so in his own name and it therefore became known as the Warren Mining District.  George being an alcoholic and a drifter soon squandered away his 1/9th ownership of the soon to be fabulously rich Copper Queen Mine on a bet that he could outrun a horse in a foot race.   Lt. Rucker didn’t fare much better, he drowned a year later in a flash flood.
(In researching this I find several slightly different versions of this, not unusual, who really knows?) 

Bisbee was running out of living space and in danger of being swallowed up by the Copper Queen Mine, so a new planned development, Warren, was established a few miles away with better housing and amenities for the mine workers. There was even a trolley line running from old Bisbee and the Copper Queen Mine to Warren.   The new Bisbee area has some attractive houses, in particular the “Douglas Mansion”, but there isn't much of interest for the tourist there other than the Warren Ballpark, one of the oldest in the US.

The Douglas Mansion


The town of Lowell is on the other side of the Lavender Mining Pit from old Bisbee.  It was originally a separate town but is now part of Bisbee.  It is the site of the "Breakfast Club", where I must go on every visit to Bisbee.  It's a town that remains stuck in an earlier time period, relatively unchanged, that appears to be primarily owned by someone who made much money with the "Broken Spoke Saloon" chain of motorcycle bars.



Lowell has a bit of a "time travel" feel to it


The "Broken Spoke Party Squad" keeps the peace here


Nostalgic old gas station


Memories of a 55 Chevy station wagon like this one that I once owned


The Breakfast Club


We usually go to the Saturday Bisbee Farmers Market when we come here, it’s a very good one.  Cowboy / Country musician extraordinaire, Johnny Bencomo, is still playing at the market with his 24 string guitar.  He is perfect for the Farmers Market crowd and seems to know many there by first name.  We have seen him several times at Desert Trails RV Park where we winter in Tucson.  He also plays in Bisbee at the Copper Queen Hotel on Monday and Tuesday nights where I see him once again. He is a real historian on country & western music and the real deal as far as a singing cowboy!


After the mines closed in 1947 most of the residents of Bisbee left and the town was on its way to becoming a ghost town.  That’s when the hippie crowd moved in buying up the very cheap property, rebuilding, opening up shops, art galleries and developing the current tourist trade.  While nearby Tombstone calls itself, “the town too tough to die” , Bisbee with its free spirit artistic mentality takes pride in calling itself “the town too high to care”.  It’s refreshing to be in a place like this, but I’m not optimistic that this will continue after the older crowd dies off.

A nice appearing woman outside the Library starts telling me about someone on Facebook accusing her of waving a gun around in the post office as she was getting something out of her purse.  She said she's been living too long in this town and she is sounding a little irrational and I’m just wanting to distance myself from her.  There are some very strange people around here.
  

That's the classic downtown Bisbee view with the "B" visible on Chihuahua Hill


The Bisbee tourism bus

They call this statue the "Iron Man" but
since this is a Copper mining town and
it's copper plated, I call it the "Copper Man"



I always admire the arts works on the back alleys

Another classic Bisbee view


Much of the Bisbee sits precariously on hillsides and the houses are connected to the nearest street with long steep stairways. Years ago someone came up with the novel idea to organize a stair race which has over the years become the popular “Bisbee 1000 stair race event”.  A satellite (Google Earth) view of Bisbee is pretty crazy looking.


Bisbee1000 sign, most of the original wooden steps were
replaced as a WPA project in the 1930's.



Google Earth view of Bisbee hints at its rugged location


Twinkles is making an attempt to do all 1,000 steps of the Bisbee stair climb route.  She couldn’t have done this last year as she had much knee pain, but this year after losing some weight has almost no knee pain and is doing the steps really well.  Now, I am shamed into doing them as well and some of these long steep stairs are wicked.  We will not be entering the competition however.



A view form one of the stairways


Good advise for stair climbers


There is much beauty on these stairs

The steps take you practically through
peoples yards



An interesting sign on a retaining wall


We take a hike up to the top of Youngblood Hill where the shrine is located, it’s sort of an annual pilgrimage.  It’s a steep climb on the city streets getting getting to the trailhead at the “famous chicken house”, then another steep climb to the shrine.  The view from there is great and if you continue to the next hill top you can look down into the Lavender Pit Mine, it’s even better.



The view from the hillsides are special


The trailhead to the cross, the chicken house is behind the truck


Twinkles gazing out into the mountains


That's an inspiring view


The rocks are beautiful too


A portion of the shrine, it's heavenly !


Bisbee far below in the gulch


We revisit the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum which is an excellant one, better than we remembered.  They are are an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.


The Bisbee deportation when striking miners were rounded up
by armed "men of the loyalty League" who marched them to the
Warren Ballfield where a "Kangaroo Court" decided who would
be released and who would be shipped out of town in boxcars


 

Everyone turned out for the opening of the new street car
line from Bisbee to Warren



Lemuel Shattuck made the most of his situation in life

Bisbee burned down several times, but came back


Occasionally miners broke into rooms such as
this "Crystal Cave", thousands of such rooms of all
sizes were found around Bisbee when mining





The Side Pony festival is much more organized this year with a schedule listing all the bands and where and when they are playing.  It a crazy event with (94) bands, mostly Arizona bands, not exactly household names, coming to Bisbee for three days of music at (15) venues around town.  The bands play 45 minute sets and then rotate to another venue during the day.  You get quite a bit of exercise if you jump around to multiple venues during the day. Most of the decadence occurs on Bisbee’s renown “Brewery Avenue” especially near the St. Elmo Bar.  Most of the venues are close by so it is easy to make the rounds, listen from outside for a minute, if you like what you hear, go inside.  The best thing is that it is a totally free event.



Side Pony Poster


A favorite blues guy was “Rocking Chair”, Gene Moran, who is in a wheel chair and is accompanied by another good player on a old resonator guitar.  I was mesmerized and inspired by the joyful look on his face when he played and he actually had a good blues voice, I bought his CD for that alone.







Sitting alone at the Stock Exchange one night, a young woman sat down next to me and asked me about the band that has just finished playing which she had missed. She figured anyone wearing a hat like mine, would know if it was good or bad.  After giving her the lowdown, she invited me to get my face painted and join the “Tribe”, I declined, but was kind of sorry afterwards. 

On another night in another bar an attractive young woman approached me with a smile and set a shot glass in front of me and then walked away.   Maybe age does have some rewards ?

I have to admit that as idiotic as it is, I still love the deafening sound of a gyrating, head thrashing hard rock guitar band like “Stinkeye” in the back room at St Elmo’s Bar.  Also the more thoughtful psychedelic flavored sound of the band, “Parlor Birds”, at the Stock Exchange Bar.

I had seen singer-songwriter Robert Kuhl, from Houston Texas, the week before in Silver City, New Mexico.  I then saw him several times over the weekend, the last time developed into a bit of a jam session with other musicians after his set at the Silver King Hotel.  Twinkles got a chuckle when as we were walking in town, he passed us in a  car and said out the window, "Hey Dude". He told a story about falling in love in Bisbee on a previous visit, in a parking lot, how it was so beautiful but ended so badly which related to a book he later read about love in our modern society that served as an intro for a song.  I was quite impressed with the poetic story.


He has a true gypsy spirit and everywhere I went
around town I kept running into him








A very powerful sounding rock band, “Larkspurs”, fronted by a dynamic Violin playing young woman was very impressive at the Copper City Saloon.  I looked around the room at one point and everyone was watching in rapt attention to her playing.


The Larkspurs had a unique sound
   

The “Auld Lang Syne” band from Utica, NY were especially good and for the last song they brought their three young cute children up to join them in a song.  The onlookers loved it, everyone’s cameras came out.  I'm quite sure these kids will be musicians themselves in a few years.



They were very good





Another favorite band was “Quinn and the Confluence” who weren't so exciting to look at but were very good musically.



Quinn and the Confluence


There was a folk musician, Joe Quinn, from Glasgow, UK who was very good but the couple seated in front of me were having trouble understanding him due to his a strong accent.  He was joking with them about the communications breakdown.



I had the feeling that Joe Quinn has seen it all



I thought that the front man of the "Manic Monkeys" band had real potential, he had the voice, the moves, the looks and attitude to be a star.



Star quality ?


It's been a very strange trip indeed !


The travel year ends on a high note for me, it's been a good ride.
  
Our next and final stop is Desert Trails RV Park in Tucson;
Twinkles and Slick  

Monday, November 13, 2017

Silver City, New Mexico

November 3 - 7, 2017:


The ride today starts on I-25 south for about 75 miles with big wide open mountain vistas in all direction but that was the boring part.  At exit 63 we turn off onto route 152 passing through the quaint small town of Hillsboro, NM and then start climbing into the Mimbres Mountains, also known as the "Black Range" peaking at Emory Pass at 8,228 feet elevation.  I’ve been up much steeper and higher roads before, but none with so many narrow 15 MPH hairpin turns and 1,000 foot drops (no guardrails) off the road for about 45 miles.  We have done this ride before in the Jeep, but in the RV it was a handful.  About 10 miles from Silver City the sight of the Santa Rita Mine comes into view which is another mind boggling sight.  I would rate this road as one of the most beautiful drives in the US.



Heading for the Black Range


Lots of narrow twisting roads


We arrive at the Rose Valley RV Ranch in early afternoon and get set up in a campsite with a nice view.  We stayed at this campground on our last visit to Silver City and really liked it.   It’s convenient to everything, has nice shower and laundry facilities, working WiFi and roomy campsites.



View behind the campsite


Rose Valley has all the trappings of an old ranch


Old farm and ranch relics tastefully decorate the ground


Silver City is a favorite stop for us, we have done about everything here, but its nice, once in a while, to be somewhere familiar, where you know the way around.  It’s a quirky, artsy town for the most part  where the people are friendly, laid back and loving life. 



Downtown Silver City view


My favorite building downtown


Many interesting buildings to be appreciated

Great roof lines


Love the colors


And the southwest murals


The Palace Hotel is a beauty



We do dinner at the Jalisco Cafe, a local favorite, which is clean, tastefully decorated with good food and service.



The place for Mexican
   

I catch an interesting musician, Robert Kuhn, at "Little Toad Creek Brewing" in Silver City.  I checked his web site, which was well done and read his bio which I thought to be a little overly creative.  It’s difficult to believe that a 20 something year old can be so world traveled and done so many things.  As he performed, I sort of started to believe the hype as he sang several songs in fluent Spanish, then switched to a beautiful done Reggae song, several thoughtful originals and had a great stage presence.
  
Unfortunately I will miss a favorite blues duo act of mine, Joe and Vicky Price, who I saw in Colorado Springs last year and is performing here a few days after we leave.  The "LittleToad Creek Brewery" is the only real brewery in Silver City and does draw good musicians on weekends and has a roomful of merchandise for sale, but I wouldn’t give it rave reviews.  They have decent food but don’t walk past and look into the open kitchen door on the side street, if you do you probably won’t want to eat there. 

We go for a hike up to the top of Signal Mountain which is a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest.  It is located at milepost 14 on route 15 north which is another crazy twisty scenic road into the mountains similar to route 152.  We really didn’t know anything about this trail except that it was 2 1/2 miles in length.  It’s probably just as well as it probably would have discouraged Twinkles from doing it.  It was a beautiful trail with great views, but an uphill climb for almost its entire length with an elevation gain of 1,800 feet.  I thought that Twinkles was done as I left her sitting on a sunny rock to continue on to the top.  It turned out to only another 1/4 mile climb to the top where I rested for a while.  As I was about to start back down she came into view, with that big smile of hers.  She just couldn’t stand to let me get one up on her, a very stubborn woman ! 



The view near the continental Divide on the way to the Signal Mountain trailhead


Twinkles taking a break on the trail


Trail view into the hazy distance


Another view later when the sky improved


We made it to the top


From the top of the fire lookout


I missed going to my usual Sunday afternoon music session at the “Yankee Street Coffee”  due to our Signal Hill hike, but they have changed the name to “Tranquil Buzz” and I’m not sure if they still have the music.  Typical of these places, they don’t have signs, or a decent website to promote anything they do.

We do another 4 mile hike on Monday on the Dragonfly Trail in the "Fort Bayard Nature Refuge".  This is a beautiful hike through rolling Juniper and Pinion grassland that lead to a creek where many petroglyphs are found in the rocks, including a few Dragonflies from which the trail gets its name.  The Alligator Juniper Trees are especially beautiful, healthy and large here.



The start of the Dragonfly Trail


Its a beautiful  grassland filled with yucca, pinion, cholla, Juniper and various grasses


How could I forget the beautiful colors of the Cottonwood Trees


Such a blue sky and a beautiful day


The dragonfly petroglyph that the trail is named for


Another good adventure is a ride north on route 180 to 152 to the Santa Rita Mine area.  Apaches, Spaniard and Mexicans have all obtained copper from this site. The Chino Copper Company started a mine here in 1909 which is now the third oldest active open pit mine in the world.  There appears to be renewed activity here since our last visit, in fact in every direction there seems to be an expansion of mining.  
I took a side road past an old shut down mine site and a road sign that said “Historic townsite of Fierro”.  Fierro is totally in ruins, mostly demolished now, truly a Ghost Town, although some people still live in the surrounding hills.  Ironically, a large, maintained cemetery exists that is still active indicative of a sizable town.  Active mines are practically surrounding the old village and I wonder if they will eventually engulf it.  One day the only thing left may be the cemetery with a historic sign in remembrance of the town.   Back on route 152 there was a sign telling of the legendary mountain peak they call the Kneeling Nun” which is now also surrounded by the mines, I wonder if it will be spared ? 
            


The Silver City area is filled with mines, careful where you walk


The Santa Rita or Chino Mine is huge


A marker to the brave women who took the striking 
mine workers places on the picket line which
inspired the documentary film "Salt of the Earth"

  


I see these old fence posts everywhere in the west and 
always wonder how old they are.  I like to touch them and
think about the lives of the people who cut these posts

and built these fences so long ago



This appeared to be the only building still standing in Fierro


This one is slowly falling apart


Saint Anthony's Church Shrine remains active



In spite of mining activity just behind the church grounds


The Fierro Cemetery appears well maintained


Many old graves and probably ghosts


The "Kneeling Nun" remains but if you read the following link you will understand 
why it remains today


We pend some time at the "Jumping Cactus" coffee shop which I will say is small but the nicest one in town with beautiful wooden tables and art work.



Good coffee Shop in Silver City


As always, I make a stop at the nearby Diane’s Bakery which always has great bread and yummy cookies, muffins, pies, pastries and much more.  We then visit the "Silver City Museum" which we haven’t done for a couple of years.  It’s in a beautiful building once owned by Henry Bower Ailman an early mine owner turned prosperous mercantile store owner and businessman.  The house was used as the Silver City fire station prior to becoming the museum.


The Silver City Museum


A sign describing the flooding that resulted in the "Big Ditch"


The flood of 1895 wiped out much of Main Street


I also took a ride to the town of Tyrone, NM site of the huge Tyrone Mine.  The original townsite eventually was swallowed up by the mine and was relocated a few miles away.  It's now a really boring looking development tract of homes.  The only thing I found of interest was a recycling dumpster !

The Tyrone Mine

One of the nicest dumpsters I've ever seen ?




Continue to watch our friends on:  www.hitchupandgo.com


Next stop is another favorite, Bisbee, Arizona;
Twinkles and Slick