30 Agosto, Lunes

Leaving Tucson

We had planned to turn in the stinky Mirage for a non-smoked car, but this morning the smell is almost undetectable! Most excellent.

• Breakfast: Ilsa's Bakery (on Dodge): scone & croissant.
• Off to surplus store on 6th. Scored
  • NATO desert camo BDU shirt,
  • khaki boonie hat,
  • pouches for
    • compass and
    • digicam (M16 mag pouch).
  What else to get? Canteen cover, AZ flag bandana? Rush Limbaugh on the radio. There are actually two surplus stores on 6th. The more southerly one is less predictable and more funky, the other has more of your camping/BDU/outdoorsy type things.
• Four million degrees in the car.
• To market, to market to buy snacks.
• It's four zillion degrees in the car. But after we drive for a while the temp drops.

We drive out Old Spanish Trail past Saguaro NM, past the Colossal Cave. We go scenic, through Vail and across train tracks now and again.

To Benson

We stop at the Horseshoe Cafe for lunch. The lemonade here rocks. Big thanks to the waitress for recommending it. The tuna melt was, well, I have had tuna salad with chopped boiled eggs and tuna salad with diced dill pickle and even tuna salad with peas in it, but I can't imagine how anyone thought of putting raisins in tuna salad. Still, if it's time to eat, I think you have to stop here for the atmosphere and coolth and lemonade. Meatier meat-eating people have more food choices.

We originally stopped down the road at a health food place but they were a vitamin-and-protein-powder establishment and they directed us back to the big horseshoe sign that we'd noted on the main drag.

It's a zillion degrees in the car. The free Cochise County paper has directions to get to the bookstore.

The Singing Wind bookstore is miles from anywhere on a dirt road. [See the resources page for directions] I get the first Ed Abbey book.

To Dragoon

Clouds are darkening in the southeast. Oops, first to Saint David. One of the rammed earth people is there. Rainy. We arrive but it is kind of hard to tell where it is. We see one house that may have been RE. On to Dragoon. We take a side road which turns to dirt. I learn the meaning of "washboard" as it applies to roads. Birds. Green. Rain in the distance. Cows in the road. The Dragoon Hotel and Dining Room looks a little sketchy from the outside. The clincher for me is the arrow-shaped sign that points to the "DINING ROOM" (quotes supplied on sign). On to Cochise. Dogs bark as we park by the Cochise Post Office to decide what to do. To Willcox, north of the Playa, and a budget econobox motel. I call the reservation number from across the road so I can use my NRA discount. We hike to the supermarket in the gathering gloom for picnic supplies and have dinner in our room. There are indicators of incipient carnivalism in the supermarket parking lot.

31 August 1999

Willcox a.m.

Motel coffee and leftovers from last night's picnic: banana, roll, brie. We check out early and drive to Chiricahua Nat'l Monument. Very silly rocks. We hike and see many very silly rocks and leftover sets from the Flintstones and Roadrunner cartoons. There are distant clouds when we start out. They soon become less distant and we get sprinkled briefly on the hike to Inspiration Point. Another funny thing about the Chiricahuas is how dramatically the vegetation changes. Suddenly instead of saguaro and ocotillo there are pines and manzanita; it's like being in the Sierra Nevada foothills or some overly picturesque movie location. Inspiration Point overlooks the canyon. We unpack lunch and watch the weather. Rain comes in fits and starts. About the time we arrive at the point, electrical storm stuff happens. I perceive the phenomenon of "rolling thunder" for myself. It is scary and exhilarating. One lightning flash is just across the gorge, ridiculously close. We see a shower travel up the other side of the valley. We finish lunch in a hurry, thinking we should start back before we get caught in an overachieving cartoon rainstorm. We get pretty soaked anyway, but are all happy at all we've seen and done.

Drive.

Turkey Creek Road, where there's land for sale, needs a look. It's hard to tell from the other end of the web what these areas actually look like. It turns out to be flat and undistinguished except for this one big barrow. We get some snacks at Mustang Mall, up the road from Sunizona Plaza. Arizona pistachios for me.

On to Bisbee

We turn south. The rain that's been hitting us on and off gets super scary about McNeal. Or was it just after Central Hwy and 191 parted company? We can see almost to the end of the little Mirage's hood and we are on a little road of mystery. At one point we consider going back to 191 and taking a longer route on the bigger road. Did i mention all the DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED dips in the road? Maybe we got lucky because there were none when the rain got scariest. And then it turned to hail, which was a little easier to see in but still scary after the reports of Big Hail from some unremembered place on the news last night.

We drive through it and find Double Adobe Road where it should be. A few miles farther on, across High Lonesome Road and into the Mule Mountains, we reach Bisbee at 15:30-ish.

It's pouring. Stopwatchgirl picks the right combination from the roundabout and around the open pit mine, and we end up parked across the street from the Copper Queen Plaza and the visitor information center.

Stay: The Inn at Castle Rock. The Inn is full of theme rooms; ours is papered with National Geographic maps. It has big porches to sit and watch the street as well as Castle Rock, across the street. There's a common reading room, a garden, and downstairs, a cafe.

Eat: Rosa's Little Italy. It's a new place down Bisbee Road, south from the traffic circle and more or less across from the hospital. Huge yummy portions. Very much the comfort food place, if Italian is your comfort food.

Now we rest.