2017 RV Journey

We left Lake Havasu on April 24, 2017 and traveled to Tuscon, AZ. Our new (to us) truck pulled like a champ and the animals quickly

settled down and slept through most of the trip. We settled into the RV park at Davis Monthan Air Force Base for 5 days. The sites were large and most of the snowbirds had gone home so the park had lots of empty spaces. While we were in Tuscon we visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It's ranked the #1 Tuscon attraction.t gallery, It's a 98 acre unique experience with a zoo, botanical garden, aviary, cave, etc. There are 2 miles of walking paths through various dese habitats. There are 230 animal species, 1200 type of plants and 56,000 individual specimens.

There's a bear taking a nap 

All kinds of cactus

Lots a lots of saguaros

The saguaro flowers are so pretty

This is a unique and rare saguaro, kind of a freak of nature but so very pretty

Davis Monthan Air Force Base.....Pima Air and Space Museum

There is a BIG museum with many US and some foreign airplanes and other things that fly. You can take a bus tour of the "Bone Yard"where retired planes are stored. Some are refurbished and put back in service and others are used for parts. There are 4 sq miles of hundreds of planes.

airplanes lines up in the field

Navy Orien sub chaser

Navy Corsair fighter

B29 Super Fortress

skeleton of a WW ll  trainer

C-130 Hercules

white coating stuff to keep out snakes, mice and other critters that would get it and destroy the insides of the planes

Navy AWACS 

May 3, 2017  Bisbee, Arizona

Bisbee was founded as a copper, gold and silver mining town in 1880.   But, by 1950, mines were closed and the population of Bisbee had dropped to less than 6,000. In 1975 the Phelps Dodge Corporation halted its Bisbee copper-mining operations .Bisbee Mayor Chuck Eads, with cooperation of Phelps Dodge, implemented development of a mine tour and historic interpretation of a portion of the world-famous Copper Queen Mine as part of an effort to create heritage tourism as another base for the economy. They worked to compensate for the economic loss due to the end of the mining industry in the area.

Community volunteers cleared tons of fallen rock and re-timbered the old workings. Eventually, this local effort came to the attention of the federal Economic Development Administration. It approved a large grant to the City of Bisbee to help the mine tour project and other improvements in downtown Bisbee; these were designed to meet tourist business needs. The Queen Mine Tour was officially opened to visitors on February 1, 1976. More than a million visitors, from all 50 states and more than 30 countries, have taken the underground mine tour train.

In the 1960's, due to cheap housing and attractive weather Bisbee became a destination for artists and counter culture hippies. Today there are many museums, mine tours, historic buildings turned into hotels, coffee houses and unique arts and crafts stores.

Huge open pit copper mine

Artists have painted all kinds of pretty additions to a normally unappealing wall

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 Unique guardians of the gate

Long staircase to another level of the town. That's Dick up at the top.

One of the old hotels still in use

Tombstone, Arizona

Tombstone is a historic city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States, founded in 1879, by Ed Schieffelin in what was then Pima County, Arizona Territory. It was one of the last wide-open frontier boomtowns in the American Old West.The town prospered from about 1877 to 1890, during which time the town's mines produced US$40 to $85 million in silver bullion, the largest productive silver district in Arizona. Its population grew from 100 to around 14,000 in less than seven years. It is best known as the site of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and now draws most of its revenue from tourism. The town still has boardwalk sidewalks and you can take an informative tour in a horse drawn carriage

A very popular old bar